Trends in American Fertility and Family Dynamics

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Lyman Stone, a soon to be PhD in sociology from McGill University specializing in population dynamics. Stone runs the Pro-natalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, and has had appointments at AEI, and has written for The Atlantic and The New York Times. Well known for his social media presence, Stone is a published academic who has explored COVID policies, religion and divorce rates. Stone has previously been on Unsupervised Learning to discuss his work on religion, but this episode they shiftto his bread and butter: demographics and the preconditions for a pro-natalist society.

First, Razib and Stone discuss the variables behind the fertility crash in the USA since 2008, and Stone debunks the notion that it is driven purely by decline in teen births. Despite the reality that teen births have dropped, disproportionately among Hispanics, Stone notes that since 2008 there has been an increase in both the age of first birth and age of marriage, resulting in reduced lifetime fertility. Stone also addresses worldwide patterns, and notes that aside from Niger almost the whole of Africa seems to have been impacted by the demographic transition that is leading to reduced fertility on other continents. He does note that the gap between the number of children women want, and the number they have, is particularly large in Africa. Razib and Stone also discuss the fiscal/monetary rationales for reduced fertility, as well as social and cultural changes. They also discuss the genetics and heritability of pro-natal dispositions, concluding that the changes we see in total fertility rate are driven by cultural change.