Why Population Collapse is Closer Than You Think - Stephen J. Shaw

1. 0:00 – 6:47

   Global Birth Rate Decline Keeps Stephen Up at Night

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Nearly three years ago since we last spoke. I wanna start afresh. What is the big question that you're tackling?

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw0:11

      The reason for global birth rate decline. It's what's kept me awake for nine years, and continues to do so. The difference now is I feel I know the answer. It's the answer that keeps me awake. (laughs) And, you know, that's why I came to Austin, uh, after, yeah, nearly three years to share what it is that the data is revealing. And, uh, frankly, I feel a sense of responsibility. I feel a sense of, uh, awareness of what has to happen to societies for us to have a chance of combating this.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:50

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SSStephen J. Shaw0:50

      Um, and just a reminder, if I can, Chris, um, no nation in history has been known to recover from long-term low birth rates. We don't have an example. So sometimes it's felt over these years, um, whilst, I mean, can I just say when we last talked, almost no one was talking about low birth rates.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:13

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SSStephen J. Shaw1:14

      And I think, frankly, the conversations we had then were part of a catalyst. In fact, I know they were because people tell me that.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:20

      That was the... basically the launch of Birthgap, right? The first documentary you did. It was either... uh, it was pretty much the first pod that you'd done.

   8. SSStephen J. Shaw1:26

      My gosh. At that time, um, you embarrassed me in jor- in your introduction you mentioned that I had only 5,000 views.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:34

      Mm-hmm.

   10. SSStephen J. Shaw1:34

       I thought, "Oh, this, this, this is gonna go badly," you know.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:36

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SSStephen J. Shaw1:36

       It obviously, uh, you know, it, it, it got up to close to a million. Um, I think I had 13 followers on, on X at the time, so really it was a, a different world for me then.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:45

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSStephen J. Shaw1:46

       But, more to the point, if you take the one-liner, uh, from that podcast that I think is quoted more often than anything else. We covered a lot.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:56

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SSStephen J. Shaw1:56

       But that... Now, this is important. At most... People forget that. At most, a woman turning 30 without a child has a 50/50% chance of ever becoming a mother. And, you know, my gosh, I, I know that's hit a lot of people, young people, especially young women who are frankly shocked that by age 30, but it's at the most 30. I'll come back to that, uh, a little bit later if I can. But at that time, I think that resonated with a lot of people thinking, "Well, why don't we know this?" Why is it that we are educating our young people? It's great. Telling them to get established on the career ladder. Great. But we're completely silent on the fact that, by the way, you very well might run out of time if you want a child. And if I could just say one of the most moving moments to me in the past week was, uh, dear Charlie Kirk just, f- uh, video, the first one that I saw after the tragedy popping up in my feed, and there was Charlie Kirk repeating that exact fact to someone in a, in a debate at a university, that a woman turning 30 without a child has a 50/50 percent. I don't know if he watched the documentary-

   17. CWChris Williamson3:06

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SSStephen J. Shaw3:07

       ... but I knew that fact got out there. And, um, so that was important, and you and I have kept in touch since then. I know a year ago I sent you, uh, a message or two that, okay, I think I've found something, and you were curious, but I wasn't ready. And, uh, you know, today I'm ready to share a little bit more o- o- on what it is that's causing this.

   19. CWChris Williamson3:25

       It's a big reveal. Yeah, I, look, I, I got interested in this conversation around about the time that we spoke, and that really was kind of like a, like a cognitive hammer blow, I think, the conversation that we had. Uh, it is very stark, and since then it's been something that I've really struggled to get my mind off. Um, I'm not an ardent campaigner for tons of stuff, you know. Climate change I think is a, a big deal, but it's not something that I'm n- like sort of furiously fighting for. Uh, AGI, bioweapons, engineered pandemics, natural pandemics, uh, nuclear risk, all existential risks I got into for a good while. I, like, I'm, I'm worried but, like, I'm not ac- actively campaigning for. And population decline is the strangest kind of risk. Not a true existential risk, permanent unrecoverable collapse, but it's really not good because it's the sort of thing that creeps up on us year after year. There's no smoke in the sky. There's no increasing wildfires. It's just this slow and then increasingly, uh, uh, rapid decline. And we've both taken a good bit of stick over the last couple of years basically for that one conversation, which is strange for me because if, if I am fucking patient zero for, like, the horrible get women out of the boardroom and back into the kitchen person, I, I really think that that shows how much work needs to be done in order to be able to get this conversation to move forward and to, uh, get people to understand the genuine, um, compassionate, progressive justifications for why this is not a good thing individually, relationally, culturally, economically, socially, politically. Like, there are... Uh, every different thing that you care about, whether you're on left or right, pretty much gets impacted by a reduction in the population size. And, um, given that this is only one thi- one of the third rails that I've decided to touch, whereas it's a third rail that you just continually hold your hand on, uh, I, uh, it's, it's a, an odd sort of bravery that you're not choosing to. Like, it's keeping you awake. You're compelled to do it at night. But, um, yeah, man, I'm, I'm, I'm glad that you're out there and as far as I'm concerned, as far as I can see, you're the best person doing, like, the most cutting-edge research, the most sort of obsessive approach to this. So it feels cool. It feels like a full-circle moment to have had that first one, to have launched the Birthgap documentary. You've got the second Birthda- gap documentary which people will be able to go and watch for free-

   20. SSStephen J. Shaw5:54

       Yep.

   21. CWChris Williamson5:55

       ... once this episode's done. And, uh, yeah, I... It's been a very strange three years for me, uh, feeling right but early on m- maybe the most important topic... that is going to capture... It's this and AI for me, or, like, I guess the other reproductive technology would be, um, embryo selection, like genetic embryo selection using IVF. Um, those three for me will be the stories of the next century. Maybe there's wars, maybe there's, like, conflict and stuff, but of new s- new things. AI, population decline, and embryo selection are the three big ones. And, uh, no one wants to talk about it when it's early. Uh, so yeah, I guess a good place to start, people can go and watch our first episode if they want, but I really wanna just give a, the best primer that we've ever done on birth rates and what's going on.

2. 6:47 – 18:29

   Why are Falling Birth Rates So Concerning?

   1. CWChris Williamson6:47

      Why do birth rates matter? Why is decline a problem at all? Why should people care?

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw6:54

      I would say that even if you don't care about birth rates, you should at least understand that it's going to impact almost everything in your life, young and old. In fact, young more than old. By definition, young have more years to live through and they've gotta live through the youth and all the way through old age. And the only thing I can possibly think of that will not be greatly affected by birth rate decline is parks. I guess parks will continue to be there. Maybe they'll become more wilded in some way, but that's the only thing I'm thinking, "Well, okay, parks will still be there." Everything else in society, from how we've set up our social care, our pension systems, our healthcare systems, will whittle away. And that's because we need people. We need workers to pay for those. So yeah, it comes back to economics, uh, and some people don't like that. Some people then twist that. Deliberately, I'm sure, that, "Oh, so this is just about money. This is just about supporting the elderly, supporting the boomers." I get that a lot. No, this is everybody. When you go to your local doctor or hospital, you're competing, effectively, for a slot to see that doctor as soon as possible and to have the best care possible. You're gonna be competing with a lot more older people for the healthcare systems that our nations can support. So the idea that this won't matter i- is a fallacy. Um, the social side worries me even more. If you take cities, and I, I spent a lot of time in Detroit, uh, six, seven years in this city, uh, founded a company there, and, you know, the thing about Detroit is, um, it's, today it's reviving. They're opening the first Apple Store in Downtown Detroit right now, wh- which to me is incredible. I remember when the first store of any kind, um, opened in Downtown Detroit some 10 years ago. When cities become hollowed out... Now, Detroit's birth rates are not the issue. It's a city designed for two million people. '70s it had two million. And within 30 years, there were 700,000 people living there. What happens then? You can't afford to pay for the infrastructure. You can't afford to pay for the city pensions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. People move away, it becomes infested with vermin, but some people still live there in amongst these decaying communities. So you have to think that birth rate decline will have a similar impact, and it is having an impact i- in Japan where I've spent most of the past eight years. So, 'cause the reality is this impacts everybody. Even if you want to celebrate that we have reached peak birth, that happened over 10 years ago.

   3. CWChris Williamson9:34

      Mm.

   4. SSStephen J. Shaw9:34

      You know, go and celebrate that if that's really, you know, a, a, a thing for you. Uh, I can't say it isn't, uh, important that we in some way stop population growth, but that happened already. That was then, this is now.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:47

      Mm.

   6. SSStephen J. Shaw9:48

      So what I really struggle with is, and I'm sure we're gonna see it in the comments here. Every time I do a podcast, the comments follow that there are too many people in the world, that this is the best-

   7. CWChris Williamson9:57

      What do you think about that argument, that there's too many people in the world?

   8. SSStephen J. Shaw10:00

      To be honest w- with you, (sighs) it's like, what's the ex- expression about the, you know, that the horse has bolted? You know, that was then. If there's too many-

   9. CWChris Williamson10:10

      What do you mean, that was then?

   10. SSStephen J. Shaw10:12

       Pop- population is determined by the number of births more than anything else. People think it's births and deaths. No, it's births. Why? Because births also predicts how many future births are going to be. Old people don't have children, at least for now.

   11. CWChris Williamson10:28

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SSStephen J. Shaw10:29

       So old people just slowly live out their lives. So by looking at the total headcount on the planet, the total number of people here, you're mixing apples and oranges. People living out their lives, and new children being born who will grow up and have more children. So it's all about the number of children, and we reached the total peak on the planet in 2013. We're already down something like 5%.

   13. CWChris Williamson10:53

       And you don't mean population number, because the population number is still increasing.

   14. SSStephen J. Shaw10:57

       And it will do for some time, for some decades, but that's because people are not dying. People are living out their lives in countries where not long ago people were dying young.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:05

       So, the analogy here is if you had a wave that was sort of crashing and you're taking the total volume of the wave, it can have a very high peak of the wave that continues for maybe even longer. On the back end of that wave, it can be a slowing slope, an ever-reducing height of it, and then when that highest peak point crashes off the end, which is those people that are living longer than previously dying, you end up with a very precipitous drop. Uh, I think it's, you know, was it Hans Rosling that does that really great analogy, uh, that's in your documentary, and he's saying how is it that you can have fewer people being born each year but the population number overall continues to grow? And it's because of this. It's because if you have better, uh, healthcare technologies, people are living longer, you get a increasing but aging population while a decreasing birth rate isn't yet felt. And this is, I think, sort of one of the real fundamental, uh, cognitive issues that people have. There's lots of people on the planet and the number is going up, but the birth rate is declining. So it hides what matters most, which is how many young people we have, in an ever-increasing, uh, population size, and that is the sort of-... um, foundation to this was the population bomb concerns that existed in the 1960s, that there's gonna be too many people, that the planet's gonna be overpopulated. Or th- there was some, uh, guy that you caught in the documentary saying, "Uh, if you have too many children, uh, you're gonna be, like, fined or, or put in jail." This was the concern in sort of the '60s and the '70s, that this was the future that we were going into. There is not... Is there a single country on the planet that's concerned about too many young people, too many births?

   16. SSStephen J. Shaw12:42

       Well, there might be in certain countries in Southern Africa, but everywhere birthrates are, are falling. And right now, as a whole, subsahar- Subsaharan African mothers are having one fewer child every 15 years. So we're looking at Subsaharan Africa reaching replacement level. I hate the term. And I, and I now try to call it stability level-

   17. CWChris Williamson13:01

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SSStephen J. Shaw13:01

       ... where you get 2.1 children per mother, where you're not growing and you're not sinking.

   19. CWChris Williamson13:05

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SSStephen J. Shaw13:06

       Um, Subsaharan Africa is going to reach that around 2050. So even there-

   21. CWChris Williamson13:11

       You go from eight, to seven, to six, to five, and every 15 years you're losing one of those.

   22. SSStephen J. Shaw13:15

       Yeah. So at the moment, we're down to around four, I believe it is. So, um, so the path is clear effectively everywhere. There are a few outliers, but by definition, they're outliers and you find interesting things when you scrutinize those. There, there's no country you can look at and say, "Ah, there's a solution." That just doesn't exist.

   23. CWChris Williamson13:33

       Just to give some headlines here for people to, uh, wet their whistle. The birthrates in Italy, Japan, and Germany are falling rapidly at exactly the same rate. Nations like Italy, Japan, and Germany that have a birthrate of 1.4 per woman will decay by one-third per generation. That means that in two generations, the population will fall by over half, and in three generations, by 70%. 70% fewer Italians, Japanese, and Germans. So this isn't just Japan anymore. This isn't just something that's happening weirdly out in the east. This is slap bang in the middle of developed Europe. There are half the number of children in Germany as there were 50 years ago. Today, 75% of us live below the replacement rate tipping point. By 2020, every country in Europe, apart from Iceland, had more 50-year-olds than newborns. And even in Subsaharan Africa, birthrates have been falling fast. Women are having one fewer child each for every 15 years that pass.

   24. SSStephen J. Shaw14:29

       Yep. And, you know, l- let's... I mean, we could talk about South Korea, e- even worse, where for every South Korean born today, births are going to half in less than 20 years. So by the time a child born in South Korea today reaches college age, the country's going to need half the number of daycares, and soon after, elementary schools and high schools. And by the time a South Korean gets to the typical age of becoming a parent, which is late 30s, it's going to half again. So the communities they grew up in will have one-quarter the number of daycare centers. So y- y- we have those... Well, I'm not gonna call them outliers because to me they're a, a potential-

   25. CWChris Williamson15:15

       First movers.

   26. SSStephen J. Shaw15:16

       First movers, exactly. Um, but on the other hand, we have Brazil with a birthrate of 1.5 now, almost the same getting down to the levels in Europe and Japan. We have parts of Southern India with birthrates around the same level, too. 32 out of 36 states in India have below replacement fertility.

   27. CWChris Williamson15:37

       India?

   28. SSStephen J. Shaw15:38

       India. Births in India peaked in 2001. India has gone through 24 years of falling births. We haven't noticed it. In fact, it overtook China to become the most populous country on Earth not that long ago.

   29. CWChris Williamson15:56

       Mm-hmm.

   30. SSStephen J. Shaw15:56

       So why... Back to Hans Rosling's great example again, using building block, using building blocks to show how we, you know, uh, h- have countries that for a time increased total population.
3. 18:29 – 30:07

   What Does Stephen Think the Population Will Look Like in 50 Years?

   1. SSStephen J. Shaw18:29

   2. CWChris Williamson18:29

      Do the projections for me. What's the global population gonna look like 2050, 2100, 2150, 2200?

   3. SSStephen J. Shaw18:37

      I, I, I'm at the point, Chris, where I...... I almost don't care. I just want us to survive. You know, it's a point, uh, it's at a point now for me, and you made a comment at the start that it's not ex- existential, I'm not so sure. I believe you're right. It's not going to be extinction-

   4. CWChris Williamson18:53

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SSStephen J. Shaw18:53

      ... but I think it's b- going to be a lot more severe than we expect. I used to think, well, after a century or so some new society will emerge-

   6. CWChris Williamson19:02

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SSStephen J. Shaw19:02

      ... and maybe there'll be societies that we like, maybe societies that we don't like.

   8. CWChris Williamson19:06

      Hm.

   9. SSStephen J. Shaw19:06

      Maybe they'll be repressive in some ways. Maybe they'll be high in religiosity. W- who knows what might happen? But there'll be societies that promote, uh, having family.

   10. CWChris Williamson19:14

       Pronatalists.

   11. SSStephen J. Shaw19:14

       Pronatalism, in- in some capacity. I now think that that's a vast oversimplification of what has to happen based on m- my more recent findings.

   12. CWChris Williamson19:26

       Trust me, you are deep- like this is all stuff that for me is cutting edge that you're now saying is old hat, and there's a new, new thing to be scared about. I was already scared but had a little bit of hope that on the other side...

   13. SSStephen J. Shaw19:41

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson19:43

       (laughs)

   15. SSStephen J. Shaw19:43

       I- I- I'm sorry. No.

   16. CWChris Williamson19:44

       I feel like the, the harbinger of fucking demographic doom here.

   17. SSStephen J. Shaw19:49

       The good news, uh, as I see it... (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson19:52

       (laughs)

   19. SSStephen J. Shaw19:53

       Um...

   20. CWChris Williamson19:54

       (laughs) Fuck, I need some good news. Holy shit.

   21. SSStephen J. Shaw19:56

       The good news (coughs) is I- I think it's quite clear what, what, what the problem is now.

   22. CWChris Williamson20:01

       Okay.

   23. SSStephen J. Shaw20:03

       Um, but maybe I can go back, uh, to Japan last summer when I thought I'd finished. I- I completed my first research paper-

   24. CWChris Williamson20:12

       Mm-hmm.

   25. SSStephen J. Shaw20:13

       ... uh, which has just been peer reviewed and published in Scientific Reports, so I, uh, I was happy a year ago, I'd done all that research.

   26. CWChris Williamson20:19

       Hm.

   27. SSStephen J. Shaw20:20

       And it shows all the key thing we were talking about in the last podcast is that mothers across all these countries are having around the same number of children as the 1970s and 1980s. That was the shocking thing that, you know, w- I was sharing, uh, two to three years ago, and it still shocks people that, uh, in the US in the 1980s, mothers were having 2.4 children. Not, not, not average woman, mothers. Once you had the first child, it was 2.4, and today it's 2.6. So family size in the US has actually increased. In the UK in 1970, mothers were having, it's 2.3, I believe, children. Today, it's the same, in effect. Japan, 2.2 in 1970, today the same. This has nothing to do with family size. It's to do with childlessness. So the very first, you know, discovery I- I- I- I made, I believe it was a discovery because it wasn't being talked about, and still surprises a lot of people including demographers, is that no, this is actually focused on childlessness, and then you get into the debate of why that is. But a year ago, I was sitting in Kyoto having literally finished all my charts for the paper I'd just published, and I thought, "Do you know what? I'm gonna prepare some charts and data for my next paper, because I know what I want to write about or what I want to study." And it goes back to our first podcast, and it goes back to that statement that I made that, uh, at most, half of women turning 30, 50/50 have a 50% chance of becoming a- a- a mother. And I wasn't very satisfied by that comment too, because I used this term at most, and why was that? Because the data I had at that point was grouped into five-year age bands, 20 to 24-year-olds, 25 to 29-year-olds, 30 to 34-year-olds, and I saw it was under 30.

   28. CWChris Williamson22:08

       Mm-hmm.

   29. SSStephen J. Shaw22:08

       So that's why at most, but I knew it was probably a little bit less, and I decided, okay, I'm now going to plot this data. H- I found all the sources, I had it for 39 countries going back decades for 300 million mothers, and this night in Kyoto, Japan, I set up my database and I just run the test to make sure I could see what I was expecting. Well, what was I expecting? I was expecting to see by age of mother some form of curve. Not many people having children in the teens these days, sure. Probably a peak after college age, a little peak, then another peak maybe around 30. I don't know why, it just seemed around 30 might be a- a- an age, and then you would certainly see a peak of people, you know, who pursue careers around 35 becoming mothers, and you would definitely see a peak from IVF. None of those peaks were there. I was staring at a near perfectly smooth bell curve by age. Now this was for Japan, and I s- looked at the same data for, well, multiple countries, multiple years, one and a half thousand data sets, and with a few small caveats, there was a smooth curve everywhere, and I stared at that chart for two to three hours, and I wrote myself an email, which I've only done that one time in my life 'cause I wanted to remember that moment, and the email said something like, "We're all the same." And what I meant was, we might think that we get to decide to become parents, but we don't. Something else decides because this perfectly smooth curve indicated there's something much more fundamental in nature that was determining parenthood.

   30. CWChris Williamson24:02

       Cross-cultural.
4. 30:07 – 35:25

   Why is it Now Harder to Become a Parent?

   1. SSStephen J. Shaw30:07

   2. CWChris Williamson30:07

      What does this mean? Just for the people that don't work well with graphs, visualizing-

   3. SSStephen J. Shaw30:11

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:11

      ... graphs in their mind.

   5. SSStephen J. Shaw30:12

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:12

      Uh, can you, uh, g- give an example, um-

   7. SSStephen J. Shaw30:15

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson30:15

      Yeah.

   9. SSStephen J. Shaw30:16

      Um, so let me try this one. So back in the day for many of us maybe, uh, you know, my parents' generation, uh, younger people's grandparents' generation, there might've been, of course, no internet. Um, there might've been a, a, a town dance. There might've been... On Saturday night at 8:00 PM, everybody in the town got together, all the young people.... and from 8:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M., everybody would be there. And there'd be a bit of gossip at the start, you know, who, anybody new, anybody bring their cousin from out of town, any breakups, any new relationships, um, maybe hoping to get to s- talk to someone you hadn't talked to or danced with before. As the evening progressed, you might get to this midpoint where you have energy, and you get this kind of maximum point where people are dancing and laughing and getting to know one another, and maybe some relationships blossoming from that moment. And then towards the end of the evening, less energy as people start to go home, some early. Uh, and probably not the optimal time to introduce your t- self to someone late in the evening. But imagine in this town, hypothetically, the manager had a great idea. Instead of opening from 8:00 to 11:00, I'm gonna open 7:00 P.M. and stay open till 1:00 A.M. It's now gonna be six hours because we're gonna get even more energy. But the population of the town is the same, so all you've done now is distribute the same energy over six hours. Some people come early hoping to meet someone, then get bored and go home. Other people have dinner first and come later. Other people meet someone they think they like and then turn their head at nine o'clock when someone new comes in that they, they want to get to know. And they might get a slap in their face, and th- that's the end of that opportunity. I think what is happening is the exact same loss of energy. I've got a word for it, vitality. I've even got a formula for it. So as this curve is stretched, as we have now, what, 20 years to consider starting a family as a woman-

   10. CWChris Williamson32:18

       Mm-hmm. 20 to 40-ish.

   11. SSStephen J. Shaw32:19

       ... uh, y- right. A man might imagine they have a little bit longer. That energy is sapped out. This lack of vitality, quite simply, the chance of you meeting someone that you're prepared to make a lifetime commitment to, especially if it involves creating a child together, um, the chance of you being on the same page with someone you happen to meet randomly goes down rapidly compared to that really compressed early 20s when the likelihood was everyone around was thinking the same thing within a year or two or three. And that's why I feel, um, the sense of, I don't wanna say gloom, but, uh-uh-the sense of skill of what we have to do.

   12. CWChris Williamson33:09

       Mm-hmm.

   13. SSStephen J. Shaw33:10

       Because mathematically based on the evidence that 39 countries and 300 million mothers, and a similar number of fathers, um, I can't see any way out of this crisis unless the average age of motherhood goes back to a much, much younger age, and I haven't yet worked out what that is.

   14. CWChris Williamson33:30

       Could you not squeeze the age together but have it be higher?

   15. SSStephen J. Shaw33:36

       Right, so-

   16. CWChris Williamson33:37

       It's an obvious first question.

   17. SSStephen J. Shaw33:38

       Yeah, well, actually it's a good first question. I haven't been asked it before to be honest, but you're right. So, i- if you, for example, could keep men and women apart-

   18. CWChris Williamson33:48

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SSStephen J. Shaw33:48

       ... literally, until they're 27, and then suddenly bring them together, you in theory could have that same peak within a three to four five-year period, and you might have the same high birthrates.

   20. CWChris Williamson33:59

       Mm-hmm.

   21. SSStephen J. Shaw34:00

       But that's not realistic in any scenario I can see. And th- that's part of the problem actually. Uh, in- in every scenario this curve is still left anchored at around, say, age 18, so you can't shift the curve because people at 18, the race starts at 18. Some people settle down at 18, and some people are thinking, "Wait a minute, I liked that girl at 18. Wh- I, I, you know, I've lost her. I've lost him."

   22. CWChris Williamson34:25

       Mm-hmm.

   23. SSStephen J. Shaw34:25

       So the p- the process starts. And again back to this curve, why is it that the number of 18-year-olds who become parents is, is less than 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 21? Um, it just keeps going up and up and up and then down and down and down.

   24. CWChris Williamson34:40

       What's the middle of the curve mostly for most countries?

   25. SSStephen J. Shaw34:42

       Y- yeah, 30, 29.6, 30. South Korea interestingly is one of the higher ones getting close to 32 now.

   26. CWChris Williamson34:49

       Mm-hmm.

   27. SSStephen J. Shaw34:49

       I think that's why their birthrates are so low because what you can see in the data for South Korea is a secondary effect, which is almost uniquely a significant increase in one child families that does not exist for example in Japan.

   28. CWChris Williamson35:05

       Mm-hmm.

   29. SSStephen J. Shaw35:07

       Um, Japan ha- about 20% of families in Japan are having one child only. Around the world it's typically 15%, 20%. In South Korea it's 40%.

   30. CWChris Williamson35:18

       And that's because they're skewed later, which means that you get fertility problems.
5. 35:25 – 44:55

   Why Women Over 30 are Less Likely to Have Children

   1. CWChris Williamson35:25

      You've said a bunch of times already that a woman turning 30 without a child has a 50% chance of ever becoming a mother at most. Can you just explain the mechanism that's causing that to happen? Because, uh, i- it, it requires a little bit of explaining.

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw35:40

      Yeah. And it's hard to accept because, you know, um, we want to believe we've got autonomy. We want to believe, uh, adamantly that we within reason have a good chance of becoming a parent as much in our 30s as in our 20s.

   3. CWChris Williamson36:01

      Especially given that you've got stats like more women have children over the age of 40 than under the age of 20.

   4. SSStephen J. Shaw36:07

      Right, and- and- and (laughs) again with, you know, if we get onto the world of, you know, media headlines and surveys, you know, that could be a whole other conversation. So there's a lot of misinformation. We are... The reason w- we're having more births over 40 is not because it's, uh, i- it's an overall increase. It's that curve has stretched and crept into our 40s, but at the same ti- time brought down birthrates at younger years. But to get to answer your question, um, I think we overestimate h- the challenge of on one level settling down as we start to form our own lives.

   5. CWChris Williamson36:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SSStephen J. Shaw36:43

      At a younger age...... we're more flexible. By the time we're in our 30s, we already know pretty much probably where we want to live, uh, what neighborhood of town we wanna live in, where we wanna go on vacation, where... The kind of friends that we now have, we want the l- our, our, our partner to like our friends and we wanna like their friends. W- we wanna have the same pastimes and hobbies. So the idea that, "Oh, I'm just gonna randomly meet," no, now your criteria list is longer and longer, and at the same time, there are fewer and fewer choices. People are becoming... People mostly still do become parents.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:20

      Mm-hmm.

   8. SSStephen J. Shaw37:20

      And the potential options to, to find that perfect partner or even-

   9. CWChris Williamson37:25

      With higher standards.

   10. SSStephen J. Shaw37:26

       Y- right. So what do we do? Well, we wait longer, and then longer, and longer, and time fades away. But if you look at it from a more mathematical point of view, um, there's... You know, and th- uh, there's a, uh, a topic called game theory. I don't know if you're coming to-

   11. CWChris Williamson37:49

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SSStephen J. Shaw37:49

       ... game theory at all. It's fascinating. I've taken a class or two in it and, uh, I've modeled this exact issue, this exact crisis using game theory. Now, in game theory, if, if anybody w- wants to watch the... or has watched Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe, um, a, a wonderful-

   13. CWChris Williamson38:07

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSStephen J. Shaw38:08

       ... movie i- in its own right, it covers his discovery of what's called, uh, the Nash-

   15. CWChris Williamson38:13

       Equilibrium.

   16. SSStephen J. Shaw38:14

       ... equilibrium. And a Nash equilibrium is when two people, uh, decide that it's in their mutual interest not to change their outcome. And it c- it, uh, it, it can be in financial markets. It can be literally gaming, or it can be playing card games. It can be, sure, partnering. And I haven't done it justice there, but when you look at pair bonding, to me, evidently, it is a Nash equilibrium. You've got two people who've decided, "Do you know what? It's in my best interest to stay with this person rather than change to anybody else," and that other person has to think the same thing-

   17. CWChris Williamson38:54

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SSStephen J. Shaw38:55

       ... especially when it has a cost, and game theory talks about cost. Here, the cost is you're going to have a child together, and that makes it more difficult to, um, have a child with someone else. You know, you're making a long-term commitment, so it's a big decision. Now, what happens when you model birth rate decline using Nash equilibru- equilibrium? What do you get? A perfect bell curve.

   19. CWChris Williamson39:20

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SSStephen J. Shaw39:21

       You get most people matching somewhere around the middle, and you get this fall off at the either side. And what happens when you model this, when you stretch out that curve, when you stretch out those years? Well, you find a collapsing curve, exactly like we see here.

   21. CWChris Williamson39:37

       Less area under the curve, as well as a lower peak.

   22. SSStephen J. Shaw39:40

       Yes.

   23. CWChris Williamson39:41

       Right. And I guess you need to add into this the fact that if you start to shift it right, that adds additional complexity on because of the limits of biology.

   24. SSStephen J. Shaw39:49

       Yeah, uh, w- which is South Korea's problem right now.

   25. CWChris Williamson39:51

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SSStephen J. Shaw39:52

       It's also our IVF problem right now. IVF is a wonderful thing for some people, the lucky ones, but I can see in the data overall... I mean, this is gonna be controversial, but I have to say it. Uh, the more society encourages later and l- later and re- productive life technology, the lower the overall chance of a person ever becoming a parent.

   27. CWChris Williamson40:13

       Because they're not gonna find a partner.

   28. SSStephen J. Shaw40:15

       Becau- there's other factors, like not finding a partner. People will delay and delay thinking, "Hey, all this technology now."

   29. CWChris Williamson40:20

       Mm-hmm.

   30. SSStephen J. Shaw40:21

       And there could be other things too, but for me, finding that partner i- is the biggest one.
6. 44:55 – 59:50

   What Factors are Causing Drops in Birth Rates?

   1. CWChris Williamson44:55

      what are the driving factors behind the vitality curve moving?

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw45:01

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson45:01

      In terms of height, in terms of, uh, left to right, and in terms of distribution?

   4. SSStephen J. Shaw45:06

      Yeah. So this goes back to, uh, our conversation on the last podcast, and the first part of my documentary, where we see sudden shifts in this average age of parenthood. It's very clear in the data. Um, and it, it, in simple terms, is linked to moments of financial crises. So you can go back to 1973, '74, in much of Europe and Japan, '71 in the US, mid '90s in Korea, and more recently, after the mortgage crisis shock in the US and many other countries, '07, '08. And what do you see? Well, mothers, parents who already have one child, really no change at all in their progression to have two, three, four, or more children as before. You would barely notice that there's been a crisis. But you see that those who have not had a child suddenly delaying parenthood, because there's a sudden drop in first-time births.

   5. CWChris Williamson46:02

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SSStephen J. Shaw46:03

      How sudden do I mean? Well, the paper just published has a section describing Japan in 1974. The last quarter of 1974, every single prefecture in Japan, 47, I believe. Um, they all, whether they were metropolitan, whether they were rural, or the tropical beaches of Okinawa, every single one of those saw an identical trend, a drop in first-time births-

   7. CWChris Williamson46:32

      Mm-hmm.

   8. SSStephen J. Shaw46:32

      ... in that quarter. Well, that's kind of confusing, because there was no financial shock in 1974 until you re- really wh- what happened nine months earlier. Uh, well, actually 12 months earlier, which is interesting. You had the oil shock. Japan, the biggest oil importer in the world. I show in the documentary the reels of the shelves all... It was like COVID, you know, but times 10. It was just c- you know, everything sold out in those days, mass panic buying. And a nation that had gone through this period post-war of rapid growth suddenly realizing, without oil, they have a problem. What happened naturally, parents across all of Japan, every prefecture, decided... Sorry, non-parents, "Wait a minute. Not this year. Maybe next. Maybe next." Same after the Lehman mortgage crisis. We see it.

   9. CWChris Williamson47:21

      2008.

   10. SSStephen J. Shaw47:21

       Yep. So after the financial crises in the US, uh, we can see in the data that, that, that this measure that demographers unfortunately still use. I feel sorry for so many demographers. The total fertility rate, uh, which measures this thing called the average woman that doesn't exist. Um, but still it's a measure that we tend to use mostly. The average woman started having fewer children. And that decline i- is known to be mapped back to that period of time. But the measures I introduced in, in my recent paper show that the average mother, the TMR, the total maternal rate, didn't change at all.

   11. CWChris Williamson48:03

       Change the, uh... Explain the difference between TFR and TMR.

   12. SSStephen J. Shaw48:07

       So this has just come out on... In my, my recent paper. And, uh, it tries... It, it separates the average woman into two women, which is a step forwards. Mothers and non-mothers. So the average mother, the total fertility rate really, to me, has been the reason demography has missed many of these trends in, in recent decades. There is no average mother, simply because you can't be a mother and a non-mother at the same time. If you look at the TMR, the proportion of women who are becoming mothers-

   13. CWChris Williamson48:41

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSStephen J. Shaw48:44

       ... that number descended sharply after '08, '09.

   15. CWChris Williamson48:48

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SSStephen J. Shaw48:48

       It was around .8, uh, .85 even, women in the US were becoming mothers prior to that. Now it's heading down close to 0.6. So-

   17. CWChris Williamson48:57

       Okay. So they've gone from most to nearly half.

   18. SSStephen J. Shaw49:00

       Yes. And it's left the US today, um... So we know from CDC National Family Growth Surveys, which are, are, are, are the most reliable thing we have for the US, we know that 90% or more of women either have or want children during their fertile years. Now s- 6,000 interviews used to be all in-home interviews, which are highly accurate. Now it's a hybrid, which has made it a little bit more blurry. But it's given us a very good sense-

   19. CWChris Williamson49:27

       90%.

   20. SSStephen J. Shaw49:29

       Have or want children around age 30.And when you compare that to the TMR, which to the US is now heading towards 60%, it means that for every 10 women in America today, if fertility patterns stay the same as they are now, one out of ten would choose not to have children, but only six will have children. Another three will be women who are, I use the term unplanned childlessness.

   21. CWChris Williamson50:02

       Involuntary childlessness?

   22. SSStephen J. Shaw50:03

       Well, this is another term. I- I- I- I- I appreciate the chance to just clarify.

   23. CWChris Williamson50:07

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SSStephen J. Shaw50:08

       Um, voluntary childlessness is easy, choosing not to have children. Involuntary is well defined as people who have medical issues. So either-

   25. CWChris Williamson50:18

       Oh.

   26. SSStephen J. Shaw50:19

       Now that can be you had a disease, there's something just not medically the way it should be, or it can be you've tried IVF and it's failed.

   27. CWChris Williamson50:28

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   28. SSStephen J. Shaw50:29

       The other side, the bigger side is this circumstantial childlessness I call unplanned childlessness, which is like let's... So let's link all this together.

   29. CWChris Williamson50:39

       Mm-hmm.

   30. SSStephen J. Shaw50:39

       Japan going back, all these waves of delaying parenthood. People, they weren't saying, "I want kids now because of the shock. I've changed my mind." They were saying, "Not yet. Not yet." And that's what's happened. We've slid into this world of delayed parenthood through people saying, "Not yet."
7. 59:50 – 1:15:14

   Stephen’s Thoughts on Involuntary Childlessness

   1. CWChris Williamson59:50

      later.

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw59:50

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson59:51

      What, um... I, I, I just wanna sink into sort of what's happening with, uh, women's culture, uh, their interpretation of having children. This is, uh, something that we talked about a lot on the last episode. People got really pissed. Let's do it again. Um, what is happening with women's desire for children, the culture around, um, becoming mothers, child-rearing? Uh, there was a number last time that we spoke about which was 80% of women who reach menopause without children didn't intend to not have children. Does that still hold up?

   4. SSStephen J. Shaw1:00:26

      Yeah. Um, uh, there is a caveat, and it's only a temporary one, so it does hold up. Uh, when you look at nations that have gone through this transition to low birth rates, high childlessness, it holds up. Um, so if you go back 30, 40 years, and you're looking at the 1960s when childlessness in the US, many countries might have been 5%, um, that-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:50

      It was much lower, which suggests that the people who did it were doing it through volition.

   6. SSStephen J. Shaw1:00:53

      Exactly.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:00:54

      Right? We're talking about the modern world. Fuck that. Fuck the '60s.

   8. SSStephen J. Shaw1:00:56

      Well, you say that. But, you know, the number of researchers... My gosh.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

      "Oh, well, if we go back to the '60s, you'll actually find that..."

   10. SSStephen J. Shaw1:01:05

       Y- uh, Chris, cohort studies.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:01:08

       It's just a fucking selection effect. Are these people, are these people actually stupid? Like, it's just a sele- It's the same as saying, "Well, look, the divorce rate's going down." It's like, yeah, because the marriage rate's going down, because the only people getting married are the ones who are really certain that they want to get married.

   12. SSStephen J. Shaw1:01:22

       Well, this is just a, a, a kind of plea to the world of demography researchers for a second. S-

   13. CWChris Williamson1:01:26

       Stop being so retarded.

   14. SSStephen J. Shaw1:01:27

       Stop using cohort for your predictions of the future compared to period-based risks of what's happening right now. And it, it... You know, we see it all over t- the place, and I get a- a- accused even recently by senior professors saying, "No, we saw some data for a cohort study." Yeah, it was women born in the 1960s compared to the 1940s. Of course family size went down back that far ago-

   15. CWChris Williamson1:01:50

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   16. SSStephen J. Shaw1:01:50

       ... because cohort...... uh, studies take decades to, to get there.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01:54

       All right, bring us into the 21st century. What do women think about having kids?

   18. SSStephen J. Shaw1:01:58

       Yeah, I see no evidence of change. The CDC numbers, um, have fallen a little bit. It used to be, uh, 95% of women have or want children around that, that age o- o- of 30, uh, now it's, it's closer to 90%. Um, so there is a shift downwards, but there's also been other shifts that have gone on at the same time of delayed, uh, parenting. And, you know, all washed out... (sighs) You know, I have talked to... I mean, the documentary, 24 countries, uh, 230 people interviewed, mostly women, uh, often, you know, sitting in their homes talking about their dreams and aspirations. And since then, hundreds if not thousands of personal conversations. Um, and clearly not everyone wants children, and we have to respe- And I wanna say this, 'cause otherwise there'll be comments against me, and, and certainly (laughs) you get gripped in with it too, I'm sure. I don't believe we should be coercive at all. We should be entirely respectful that some people genuinely do not want children. And that's fine because those people have other things that they can do to support society. Um, I don't think it benefits anyone by trying to guilt them in, in any way. Um, I wouldn't want to live in a society where we were trying to guilt people into having children.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:03:18

       They're also not going to make particularly good mothers-

   20. SSStephen J. Shaw1:03:20

       There you go. Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:03:20

       ... if you force somebody who doesn't want to be a mother into being a mother.

   22. SSStephen J. Shaw1:03:23

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:03:23

       Yeah, I mean, look, I, I, I can see exactly where you're going with this. At no point in any of the conversations that me and you have had have we said, "We should be forcing women who don't want to be mothers into being mothers." That's not where you improve birth rates from. We're talking about the huge, overwhelming percentage, the 80% of women who pass reproductive window and do not have kids didn't intend to not have kids.

   24. SSStephen J. Shaw1:03:49

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:03:49

       Right? This, uh, uh, unplanned childlessness. And these women have support groups to grieve over families that they never had. Like, of the, of the two groups of people, the one who's on the outside saying, "Look at these two white men getting women out of the boardroom and back into the kitchen, making them domestic prostitutes, conned by the patriarchy into just churning out web... This is just The Handmaid's Tale all over again," where's your compassion for the 80% of women, the overwhelming majority? And the 20%, me and you are saying, "Awesome. Like, you made your life choice, that's totally great. Congratulations. Enjoy your future in however you want to do that." Like, how is this not the compassionate perspective when you've got women who literally have fucking support group? Who was that lady that's got the or-

   26. SSStephen J. Shaw1:04:36

       Judy Day.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:04:37

       Judy Day.

   28. SSStephen J. Shaw1:04:37

       Good.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:04:38

       Fucking fantastic.

   30. SSStephen J. Shaw1:04:39

       Yeah.
8. 1:15:14 – 1:22:58

   The Clash Between Those Who Want Children and Those Who Don’t

   1. CWChris Williamson1:15:14

      it's an interesting one, at least where that comes in to land. For me, the, the tall girl problem, as I've come to call it, raising socioeconomic standards that women have got and hypergamy, those two together means that there's an ever-increasing cohort of high-performing women competing for every decreasing cohort of ultra-high-performing men above and across from them. Uh, th- the research doesn't seem to be great at kind of reducing hypergamy down. Hey, women, if you're outperforming men socioeconomically, maybe you should be looking to date a little bit lower. Uh, it, it's even difficult to try and ex- um, uh, separate out education from employment, that, uh, a woman with a degree or a master's dating a blue-collar worker who earns more than her but is less educated, there's some complications in that too. So men can't even compensate for under-education but over-employment in that regard. So the whole, um, "It doesn't matter, dude. Go and get your apprenticeship. You can earn more money as a co-" or whatever, sometimes that doesn't work, 'cause people tend to mate within their education band.

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw1:16:14

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:16:15

      Like, um, that, to me at least, seems to be one of the big drivers of this imbalance in early age. It's one of the reasons that you're getting older guys dating younger women, because by that, you're able to compensate so much more socioeconomically that it does, um, uh, flip that imbalance. But given that people date assortatively within their education band and two women for every one man, uh, uh, completing a US college degree, like, that, tha- th- that's just raw data, again, on this, that, that isn't great for mating when it comes to sort of the relational aspect of this. The thing, just to kind of round out the, the women point that we came into earlier on, I saw a really interesting reaction to Taylor Swift getting engaged. Taylor Swift got engaged to Travis Kelce. Uh, she has been, I think for a lot of women, a kind of permanent breakup artist for a very long time, you know, sort of a, over a decade now. She's been singing about the machinations and challenges of a woman going through the world of makeup and breakup and heartbreak. And I saw a bunch of different threads and forums talking about how it's such a shame that Taylor had got engaged, because she was going to be such a wonderful role model for child-free women. Now, that makes sense if she wanted to be child-free, and she still may. Her and Travis may decide to not have kids. Something tells me that that's not gonna be what happens. Uh, first quest- uh, first off, I think that there is gonna be a bump in your vitality curve if Taylor Swift gets pregnant, um, just because of that memetic, like, m- m- you see mothers around you, that means that you get more mothers thing. Like, I just think that's gonna be, uh... You know, I'm sure that some group of women lost weight when Adele lost weight. Uh, and Lizzo, right? You know, like, people that are in the public eye that do a thing, you end up doing that thing too. Um, th- but the other side of this is, uh, I think a lot of the conversation, or the question that I have is, why is the conversation, uh, that is so pro, or so anti-natalist, specifically for women, that you don't need to have kids, you're being forced into a family, if it's the case that four out of five women that fall off their reproductive window and didn't intend to not have kids... How can it be the case that the talking point online encouraging women to not have kid- why is that not being pushed back against-

   4. SSStephen J. Shaw1:18:44

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:18:45

      ... if four in five women that aren't, that are childless didn't intend to be?

   6. SSStephen J. Shaw1:18:48

      Yeah. So, uh, I, I've come to see, um, a huge divide, a lack of empathy, uh, understanding between those people who want kids and those people who simply don't. To a point, I think, often, they can't understand each other. If you don't want kids, it's hard to understand why anybody would want to get up three times during the night for the first three years of your kid's life and, you know, have to transport them to e- e- every after-school activity, uh, f- for a, a couple of decades. And on the other side, if you do have that strong desire to children, it's really quite hard, I think, to understand completely why someone just doesn't have that desire.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:19:35

      Mm.

   8. SSStephen J. Shaw1:19:35

      So, I think part of this is fueled by this lack of empathy and, and, and understanding. But it goes deeper than that. Um, I mean, anti-natalism is alive and well. And, you know, it's one of those things hiding in plain sight, but, you know, I- it certainly touches me, you know, when I get heckled by a professor in Japan, as I was recently.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:19:58

      Mm-hmm.

   10. SSStephen J. Shaw1:19:58

       You know, a British professor of strategic thinking, I believe it was, uh, came into a class of Japanese young students where I was, uh, talking about, uh, the, the, the subject and started, uh, hurling, uh, questions at me without letting me respond.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:20:14

       Mm.

   12. SSStephen J. Shaw1:20:14

       Or been canceled at Cambridge University because, uh, u- y- that happened, I think, just after our podcast.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:20:20

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSStephen J. Shaw1:20:20

       That, um...... you know, it, it was too controversial a topic. Well, where is that coming from? Why is it that people want to make it their business-

   15. CWChris Williamson1:20:29

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SSStephen J. Shaw1:20:29

       ... to tell other people not to have children? Um, and I believe it has come from sources, sources that had good funding back in the '60s and '70s. Uh, the person you referred to earlier who was telling, uh, people that they should be locked up if they have more than two children in America, that was, uh, Paul Ehrlich who wrote the book, Population Bomb, and clips of him saying that are, are in the documentary. Um, but the funding for that came from some very substantive foundations, and those organizations are still there. I show in the documentary, the, the latest part, how, in the US, uh, Paul Ehrlich's nonprofit organization is still alive and well.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:21:14

       What's it called?

   18. SSStephen J. Shaw1:21:15

       Population Connection.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:21:16

       Okay.

   20. SSStephen J. Shaw1:21:16

       It's out of DC. And they boast that they teach 4, 5 materials to three million high school children per year based on-

   21. CWChris Williamson1:21:25

       What's their justification? Why do they want fewer people to exist?

   22. SSStephen J. Shaw1:21:28

       Well, I think they're locked in time. You know, talking to them, they, um, they are affable people. They will, you know, tell you how wonderful kind of it can be to have a child, but then tell, tell you 20 reasons why, why you might not want to. Um, and then, well, they have a very, I would say, clever tactic of pointing to stats of people in Africa and showing pictures of, "Here's an Afghan man marrying his 10-year-old bride," and, and then subtly telling you, "You can do what you want." So there's this undertone. Now, they are part of a group, and I, uh, I'm happy to state it because the CEO told me that they do not, uh, uh, inform people about birth rate decline. I would say to anybody listening to this who, who themselves or knows a volunteer working for organizations like that-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:22:19

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SSStephen J. Shaw1:22:20

       ... stop.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:22:21

       (laughs)

   26. SSStephen J. Shaw1:22:23

       Because you are telling half-truths to young people. Find an organization that's telling the full truth about exactly what's happening, and particularly when it comes to, uh, sex education. We're very good at telling young people how to avoid pregnancy, and that's a good thing. What we're not good at all is telling people there's a fertility window, and by the way, you've a lot to cram into your 20s. And by the way, here's the real data on the likelihood of becoming a parent at age 30 or 35.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:22:50

       Mm-hmm. 15% at 35 is fucking insane. That's so wild.

   28. SSStephen J. Shaw1:22:54

       That's optimistic.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:22:56

       Um,

9. 1:22:58 – 1:31:03

   Are Antinatalists Evil?

   1. CWChris Williamson1:22:58

      what do you make of people who celebrate women having fewer children?

   2. SSStephen J. Shaw1:23:07

      (sighs) I don't understand it. I mean, I really... Uh, it, it, it... e- ev- evil. If people don't want children, they shouldn't have them. If people are having fewer children because they themselves have decided to have... Well, fewer than what? Fewer... There is an organization in the UK, um, who come out with this mantra, "People should have fewer children than they want."

Episode duration: 2:50:13