https://discord.gg/EGFRjwwS92

In this illuminating episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Dan Hess, better known as Morberths on Twitter, to discuss the crucial behavioral and lifestyle factors that correlate with higher and lower fertility rates. Hess, a prolific demographer and data analyst, shares his insights on the impact of marriage, urban density, living arrangements, and sexual history on fertility outcomes.

The conversation begins with an examination of the dramatic rise in the average age at first marriage across Europe and its potential implications for fertility. Hess emphasizes the importance of marriage as a fertility factor, highlighting the significant happiness and wealth gaps between married and unmarried individuals.

The discussion then turns to the role of urban density and housing in shaping fertility patterns. Hess argues that suburban living and lower population density are more conducive to higher fertility rates, while high-rise urban environments tend to suppress reproduction. Malcolm and Simone explore the potential of exurbs and remote work as a solution to this challenge.

Hess also delves into the impact of young adults living with their parents on fertility, noting the stark differences between countries like Spain and Italy, where a large proportion of 25-34-year-olds still reside with their parents, and countries like Sweden, where this practice is far less common.

Finally, the group discusses the relationship between sexual history and fertility, with Hess presenting data suggesting that individuals with fewer lifetime sexual partners tend to have higher fertility rates. Malcolm and Simone offer their perspectives on the underlying factors that may drive this correlation.

Throughout the conversation, Hess showcases his extensive knowledge of demographic trends and data, emphasizing the importance of understanding and addressing the complex web of factors that influence fertility in modern societies.

Dan Hess: , [00:00:00] this is, this is one thing that's really wonderful about my feed is that you can search at more births for whatever topic.

And there's a good chance that I will have written about it.

Simone Collins: Now you are the kind of the, the reference point in encyclopedia. If you need, well, I

Dan Hess: really want to, want to Uh, give 40.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is this is fascinating. Yeah. 48 percent of homeschooling households have three or more children

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello everybody. Today we are joined by Morberths on Twitter, also known to his more close acquaintances, such as ourselves. And now you, Daniel, we're super excited to have you, Daniel. And today, because you are the foremost person on Twitter, giving really great graphic, heavy, in depth threads on Twitter on demographical apps and prenatalism, we'd love to discuss.

The fertility factors that correlate with higher fertility and lower fertility from a behavioral and lifestyle standpoint. Uh, previously we, we talked about things that were happening on a national level from a [00:01:00] policy and propaganda standpoint, but I think it's really fun to talk about the personal attributes.

So, um, you know, Malcolm and I have talked a lot about Different cultural elements, but really what really stands out to you. And what have you talked about at length on Twitter when it comes to factors that correlate with low or high

Dan Hess: fertility? Uh, yeah. So, um, one of the factors, uh, that that's a really big factor that's not especially talked about is, is marriage.

So, so that's one thing that, that, that's a really big fertility factor. And, um, and so, so part of it, um, is. You know, people are just marrying late. And actually this is a, this is a Twitter that I just put out today, but we, you can see the average age at marriage for, um, let's put it up on the screen here.

Let's see if I can, you know, pull that up one second here.

Simone Collins: What has it gone down from? [00:02:00] I've, cause I feel like when I've watched all these 19 average age at first birth. Yeah. Marriage, marriage, marriage. I thought it used to be around 20, 21 or so. That's what I would guess in like the 1940s through, right.

I'll put it here.

Dan Hess: Yeah. So here we can see the age at marriage in Europe and it's like super high everywhere. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: so for people who are watching this on audio, like it is actually shocking. Like, most of the ages are like 33. 8 in France, 34. 8 in Sweden,

Simone Collins: 31. 9

Malcolm Collins: in the UK in Germany at 31. 2 in Ireland, 31. 9. Like it is wow.

Where'd you get the UK number? I don't see that. Simone.

Simone Collins: I'm sorry. I'm looking at Ireland. Silly

Dan Hess: me. Sorry. Yeah. This, this map doesn't show the UK, but it's, yeah, certainly it's, it's very high in all of Europe and I'm going to, I want to switch to share the lowest one

Simone Collins: we're seeing here is. 24. [00:03:00] 9. Malcolm, you and I married at like 25 and 26.

We're, we're, we were young

Dan Hess: married

Malcolm Collins: people. Yeah. You look at a country like Turkey, it's 25. 2. So we were younger than we would have brought down the average first age in Turkey. Oh. And, uh, yeah,

Dan Hess: that's wild. Yeah. So I, yeah, I want to, you know, actually, uh, share something else that's, I want to share, show this on a world scale so we can see what's going on even, even, even more.

So, so here I didn't realize

Simone Collins: how late it was on average. I think I'm, I'm wondering maybe this has to do with second marriages. If, you know, if they're counting every single marriage that happens, maybe when 70 year olds get remarried after they're widowed,

Dan Hess: here is the world. So here we can see first marriage, first marriage, first marriage.

So you can see how, how Europe stands out as having like these super late marriages. You can see, you can also see that what's the most fertile part of the world. And what's the part of the world that has. Early marriages. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: [00:04:00] but this is really interesting. So we talk about fertility collapse in Latin America and I think what people would be surprised by here is a good chunk of Latin America has later fertility, uh, later marriages than the United States.

Um, and I, uh, and, and, and most of the developed world has later marriages in the United States. Um, you know, you're looking at a place like, you know, Australia has much later marriages, South Africa, Canada, developed country anymore. Um, Greenland has super late fertility rates, Chile very, very late fertility rates, Brazil late, late, I'm sorry, not late fertility rates, late marriage rates.

So, uh, Brazil and Chile are really unique on this graph and they're, they're in, uh, like 34, 32 range, right?

Dan Hess: So interesting, you know, and, and fertility is dropping all throughout the twenties. So like by the time you're 30, even for a woman, uh, fertility is already like way lower than it was. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: that's like trying to, to have kids with a

Dan Hess: [00:05:00] grandmom.

We have, we have six children, so I'm, I'm, I'm very fortunate. Um, my, uh, You know, when my, when my wife was, uh, third, she was 36 or 35 when she had the fifth one and she was 40 when she had the sixth one, but when she was like 30, 35 or 36, you know, the doctor called it medically like a geriatric pregnancy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, which is. This is the, now this is the age that, that, that people are getting married in Europe. Now, I, I, I do want to, you know, you know, people are, are instantly going to react. Well in, in Europe, uh, people don't have to get married to have kids and most people don't. And that's kind of true, but nevertheless.

Um, it is still true that the odds of getting, uh, of having children are far, far higher, like four times as high if a couple is married. And this came up in the

Simone Collins: Swedish data that I think Malcolm and I reviewed in a previous podcast where [00:06:00] correlating highly with this drop in fertility rate that now even Sweden is seeing, despite their incredibly pronatalist lifestyles and policies is the.

The cohabitation of couples, but not marriage, uh, which is interesting. So,

Dan Hess: yeah. Yeah. So people who say that marriage, uh, you know, doesn't matter, like the data does not bear this out. The,

Malcolm Collins: oh my God, the data on marriage in terms of like life, happiness and stuff like that is so high. We did another episode on this and I'll try to pull this up in the research, but I seem to remember it's like the difference between making like.

200k extra a year on average. Um, and so if you correlated, it was career decisions that people are making, uh, uh, you know, instead of getting married, um, if what they are actually pursuing is happiness, uh, they are making the wrong decision. Like,

Simone Collins: I think we have to think about what marriage signals to, um, marriage signals, a level of [00:07:00] expectation.

That you are going to be in this for life. And when you choose to not get married, I think the default assumption is that at some point you're not going to be together. Even couples who marry and then get divorced a year later, they still started out thinking it was going to be forever. And those are the people who are going to commit to having kids.

Yeah.

Dan Hess: And I mean, the, the, the advantage of marriage like socially is just massive. I mean, in terms of, if you look at. And happiness, the happiness gap is huge. The wealth gap is huge. The life expectancy gap is enormous. So, and, and, you know, there's another thing you have this, it's funny. You have this element of like the far right and the far left that are like against marriage.

You have the men going on their own way, manosphere types, and then you've got the hardcore feminist types that are both against marriage, but you know, whereas the, the normies in the middle are like, you know, this is obviously good. Um, But you go ahead. I don't know. I was

Malcolm Collins: just going to say, it's 12 to 25 percent higher, uh, or 24 percent higher.

What is [00:08:00] higher? Uh, happiness ratings among individuals who are married versus ones who aren't. Um, and so I'm talking

Simone Collins: about that when I'm, when I'm on YouTube and I'm just organically letting things autoplay. The messages that I'm getting, at least from women, is having a husband is like having another child to take care of.

They don't provide support or they're going to leave you, you know, even if you want to be a trad wife and be supported by them, they're going to dump you and you're going to be on your own and your life's going to be ruined. Well, it all

Malcolm Collins: doesn't, you know, we do have. Fewer disincentives to leave a partner.

Like if your husband has married you because you're attractive, um, which is a huge problem because women often try to secure husbands for, you know, using that. Um, he doesn't really have that much of a reason to not leave you when you become older and that's intrinsically less attractive, which is like a natural thing.

process that women go through when we're attracted. This is how fertile and genetically healthy a woman looks in a historic context. Um, and, and historically the reason why men didn't do this [00:09:00] is because when a man left his wife in a historic conservative context, um, everyone in the community would know that he had left his wife and this would attach a huge negative social modifier to his, Status as a partner and his status was in the community.

Um, whereas we no longer have these externalities anymore. And then with women, you know, you've got alimony and all sorts of other perverse incentives around, uh, potentially leaving a husband and not having as much, uh, negative effects as you would have in a historical context, because you're still getting the cash flows, you know, why not leave the husband, if you still get the cash flows, no matter what you do, you know, um, Um, and so, uh, it is important to recognize why people are so critical of the, of, of, of the institution of marriage today, while still pointing out that like, objectively, if you can get into a healthy marriage, um, because keep in mind this, like 24 percent happier rating, uh, this is including the terrible marriages.

Oh yeah. [00:10:00] And good marriages are like. Off the charts, like double happiness ratings.

Dan Hess: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like it's, it's, it's, it's the gap is just so incredible that, that it's, it's almost ridiculous that the people aren't like knocking down the doors eager for this. And you know, one interesting point is that divorced men who are supposedly the ones that got burned and wrecked the worst, you know, the, these are the, the, the reason that the, the MGTOW people are.

are, are so against marriage because, oh, it might end in divorce. And then like the guy's wrecked. No, those are those guys that got divorced are the ones that are lining up first to get remarried. So they're not upset that they were married. They're just upset that it ended and they want to get back into a marriage.

Because if you look at the remarriage rate, it's actually very high. But I, I have, I have another chart that I want to, uh, share next,

Simone Collins: which is, do you know, off the top of your head, if remarriage rates are higher among men versus women? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Hess: They are higher among men than among women. That's that, that is what the data [00:11:00] shows.

But the, the, you know, one thing that, where, where women really, uh, have a huge benefit from marriage is if you look at household wealth and, and, and household income. It's just massively, massively higher, uh, for women that are in marriage there, there, there's just, um, there, there's just so many, uh, economic efficiencies, you know, in terms of, in terms of everything, but there, there is another point that I want to talk about.

With marriage, uh, there's actually kind of two types of marriage. And we, so there's like kind of the, the business type of marriage, which is the marriage that existed until like the 20th century, the corporate family. Yes. Yes. And well, but, but this is not a dead model. It's actually a pretty active model.

Yeah, totally. If you look, you know, your couple, even, I mean, I know you, I know you guys are quite in love with each other, but also [00:12:00]

Simone Collins: we also decided to get married when we knew we weren't in love. And that was

Dan Hess: crucial. You were also have a, you're a mission driven marriage. No, no,

Simone Collins: we are, we are a corporate marriage first and

Malcolm Collins: foremost, the concept of marrying for love or for, I mean, it's one of the crazy things is, uh, you know, we tried to match make people right.

And they'd be like, we're like, look, we've done like a deep dive on all of your personal history, everything like that, your class status, everything. You guys are an amazing couple. And then they look at the picture of the person and they're like, Oh, I'm not interested. And I'm like, uh, excuse me, this, this isn't a prostitute.

This is someone you're marrying. How arousing you find them is next to irrelevant. Um, and, and, uh, they'd been taught. They're like, no. Sex is very important. I've learned that from, uh, What? Well, where did you learn that from? You learn that from these stupid status hierarchies that you're competing in, but at an objective level, if you choose your partner, uh, and, and how arousing they are is a huge [00:13:00] part of why you are choosing them, you are going to be dramatically less happy.

And less productive and your kids are going to be less efficacious than you would have been had you just approached this like a sane person. And we're not like serving people, you know, individuals who are way out of their league or something. No, no, no,

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: These are people who just like are not their Perfect aesthetic, you know, where the way you should really be approaching marriage is anyone who's like above like a bottom bar of like, I would have sex with that person should be easily in the category of marriage.

Simone Collins: Anyway, what, what, Daniel, is your, your second type of marriage aside from

Dan Hess: the second one is called companion and marriage. And so actually this is an interesting thing because most people don't realize this, but the original fertility collapse in America was. Like before, like long before the pill, like America and like all of Western Europe were actually below replacement level in the 1930s.

And you have to remember, by the way, [00:14:00] That replacement level fertility, uh, was higher than 2. 1 back then. It was probably like 2. 5 or something. With all the deaths and with higher like infant and child mortality and stuff like that. So like Europe and America were below replacement fertility, like in the 1930s, imagine that.

And what, what caused that was the, was the transition from this corporate or like the view of marriage. Of a household as like a business and as a purposeful, like mission driven thing to, to like companion of marriage, which, which is like, you know, so I actually, uh, you know, because there was, there's a ton of ways actually, you know, people think that, Oh, it's just modern birth control.

People have been able to control their fertility for like thousands of years. Oh yeah. You know, the, the reason that Rome collapsed almost certainly. And I had a, I have a Christmas day thread. That's awesome. I just popped that out there and it got like. Like a couple hundred thousand views. Like I just, I, I came home, I, I came downstairs, like to the presence just like a little bit late so that I could, I could pop out [00:15:00] that thread and then, you know, but it was this, because it was like talking, talking about the fall of Rome, which is like on every person's mind, right?

Every man, you know, every man's mind. Every man's mind. Every man's mind. No. Right. So, so, uh. Yeah, it was actually fertility collapse, you know, uh, in Rome, like back then, you know, we know because, because the, the leaders of Rome were trying really hard to encourage fertility, but people, you know, the Roman leaders were able to, they were trying to pass laws to encourage people to have more children, but people were able to control their fertility very easily.

You know, through withdrawal is, you know, people have known about withdrawal since probably like caveman times, probably, you know, so, so, and also they would, they would leave, leave the babies on hillside. So there are all sorts of things. Oh, there

Malcolm Collins: are loads of interventions. There's less reasons for cultural practices.

That you inherited from your ancestors to be followed because they can seem pretty pointless and they will endanger, uh, hedonistic pursuits and mindsets. Um, [00:16:00] and so, you know, cross culturally, whenever you have a time of prosperity, uh, you often abandon many of the old ways, which motivate things like kids have value and stuff like that as concepts.

Yeah, we do see this in Rome,

Dan Hess: as you pointed out. Okay, so something new, something different I want to point out next. Here's a new, a new visual. This is probably something that you guys have seen. Um, here we go. This visual was created by John Byrne Murdoch over in the UK. Oh, we did an episode on this. This went super viral.

Um, you know that, so here, here's an interesting fact. Like in the United States in the current year, uh, Interracial marriage is more common than interpolitical marriage. That's interesting, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and it's interesting when you consider that for every conservative man, like if you're out there dating and you're a conservative man, there, there are more than two conservative men [00:17:00] fighting over every conservative woman.

And there's more than two democratic women fighting over every democratic man.

Dan Hess: It's wild. Right. So, so, so I would say my recommendation for my daughters would be, you know, become a hardcore conservative. My, my recommendation for my sons would be to, you know, kind of hide if you're high, hide any conservatism and be, you know, show, show, show moderation.

So, so it, you know, just, just sheerly by the numbers, but I,

Simone Collins: that's actually really solid dating

Dan Hess: advice. Now, here's another piece of Well, I don't

Simone Collins: Malcolm, you, you coded as broadly progressive when I met

Malcolm Collins: you. I agree. So what, find the conservative genotypes in the progressive population?

Dan Hess: I guess. Okay, well here, I want to, I want to show like another chart.

And this is, um, here we go. Let's see. So here we go. What this is, what this shows is, um, How the, the time that [00:18:00] men, uh, in invest in household chores. So this is one way of bridging the, the kind of the, the cultural gap between men and women. Men and women have, have got to get along if you're gonna have children, obviously.

So. It turns out that the countries that are kind of more, have more hard, hard coded gender roles, which would be like Japan, South Korea, Italy, you know, the term machismo is an Italian word. I think, um, you know, these, these countries have lower fertility rates than countries where, where men are more, uh, willing to, to help domestically.

Um, And so this is something

Malcolm Collins: I hadn't seen this before, but this makes perfect sense. And it's something that a lot of conservative guys misunderstand. They're like this, get in the kitchen attitude. They think this leads to high fertility rates. And I'm like, it objectively does not. If anything, it is what is causing the South Korea's fertility collapse because no woman wants to get married under these

Dan Hess: [00:19:00] shirts.

Oh yeah. Yeah. In South Korea, there's like a term for it. I forget what it is, but it's like the, the three nose. It's like no marriage or nose. Oh geez. There's four now. I

Malcolm Collins: know it might be today. It's a no marriage, no sex, no kids. And I think that there's a fourth one,

Dan Hess: but I could be wrong anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

And these are women that are just, you know, straight on strike. Now, what is manlier to like refuse to do dishes and have no children or be there as a guy, like in the kitchen, helping out and then have a bunch of kids. You know, I,

Simone Collins: it's no sex child rearing, dating or marriage. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's no sex. Yeah. No sex.

Child rearing. Yeah. Dating

Dan Hess: marriage. Well, and I have a personal, uh, uh, a personal anecdote related to that. Uh, so, um, my, after, after four kids, I received an ultimatum from my wife. Uh, oh. You know, no more kids we're done, you know, unless you start helping around the house. Ah, you know. Actually, there's a big gap between number four and number five and six.

I had to, you know, 'cause I thought, you know, I'm, you know, I'm [00:20:00] the breadwinner. My wife is taking care of the kids. Like, you know, I, I was like, I'm doing my part. I'm done. Mm-Hmm. , I, I, I've, I've checked off my box, you know, and I, I got that ultimatum and I had to learn, uh, learn to be a lot more domestic. I do a lot of, uh, I do a lot of laundry.

I do a, I do all the grocery shopping. I do all, all sorts of house cleaning and cooking. You know, I had, and then my, my wife was, uh, was willing to, to have two more. Now we're, we're, we're at six.

Simone Collins: So that's really interesting. So like the marginal investment needed from you in terms of supplementary care became higher.

after a certain number of kids.

Dan Hess: Yeah. So, well, there were, there's a, there's two aspects to it. One is like the raw amount of help, you know, and, and the fact that, you know, taking off the load so that, that certainly made it easier. But the other part is, you know, when there's like, you know, a, a, a cold, uh, gender dynamic when there's conflict in the gender domain, you know, in the, you [00:21:00] know, then that's gonna, And what, what the, what the guy can do to, to soften that and fix that is to, is to, is to start helping domestically, you know, or help it or help it in, in whatever ways they can.

And, you know, all, all large families know that, like, it's all hands on deck and it's not, uh, uh. You know, it's whatever works and what, you know, if somebody is, is good at some particular thing, you know, then they can do that, you know, regardless of traditional gender roles. So, so it's, I think that the, the best, uh, philosophy for what kind of household you have or what kind of dynamic should you, you have is like, whatever

Simone Collins: works.

Yeah, totally. And our household, I do all the inside. housekeeping. Malcolm does all the outside housekeeping. I get any, I do the, obviously all the pregnancies and then any infant and he gets all the

Malcolm Collins: older ones. Every kid other than the youngest is my responsibility. So as you

Simone Collins: can see, Malcolm's

Malcolm Collins: taking on the lion's share.

Oh, I don't think so. Uh, [00:22:00]

Dan Hess: And there is no answer. There's no right answer. It's just like what every couple is going to find it, like what they're comfortable with and what they're good at. And it may, it may break along traditional gender lines. It may break totally opposite, you know, there, so, but it.

Malcolm Collins: That's the, but the get in the kitchen mindset is sterilizing.

And it's something that so many guys think that they look so cool for doing. And it's like, no, you don't look cool.

Simone Collins: I appreciate too, that you pointed out the birth control argument. Cause it's both the get in the kitchen argument and the birth control argument that we hear so much from misguided people.

Talking about pronatalism and it just drives me so nuts because to your point. Yeah, people totally had ways of not having kids Um, and that has existed for a long time and no birth control was not the death now There are a lot of other cultural factors Um, but what would you else what other

Dan Hess: factors?

Something completely different. Yeah, which is which I want to talk about which is housing [00:23:00] So let me, let me pull up another. This is great because

Simone Collins: there's a huge correlation between Yimby people and pronatalists. We've noticed. We're not really sure why, because we haven't, we don't see a whole lot of

Malcolm Collins: practical, real, obvious solutions that you can implement that make things better in society, but the Yimbyism is, or.

Um, yeah, you know, people who don't know Yanby as it means yes, in my backyard, they're, they're trying to loosen restrictions on development to get less expensive houses and they want to cross correlate these things. And I don't think that they're highly cross correlated

Dan Hess: at all, but maybe

Simone Collins: Daniel, you can

Dan Hess: change your mind.

Okay. So I, I have, yeah, yeah, this is, uh, uh, an issue that I have and I have a strong disagreement, actually. I love that. That's our favorite. Okay. Here we go. This is a. You know, this, this, so what we're, what we're looking right now is Macau. Okay. This is Macau. It's fertility is like 0. 6 or something. It's like insanely low.

It's like one of these insanely low places, just like Seoul and Shanghai and [00:24:00] Beijing and Bangkok and places like this. Um, so this is my, I have a very sharp disagreement with like Brian Kaplan. I know he's got this new book coming out and he's a Yimby guy. He's like, get rid of all zoning. Yeah. Um, but I think you have to be.

Very careful because it matters dramatically, you know, what you build, uh, you know, because this, you know, if you build a, an apartment tower, uh, you know, that could be around for a hundred years and, and, um, you know, so one of my posts, uh, you know, the, the density is, is intensely correlated with fertility, like all the way up and down the spectrum.

So let me, let me share something, something else next. Um, so. So a kind of a contrast, um,

let me see, here we go. Now how does that look? [00:25:00]

Simone Collins: Now we're looking at a picture of a This is Atlanta. Suburban

Dan Hess: neighborhood. This is Atlanta, so the fertility, so nor, usually what we see in the world, and this is one of the most strong correlations in like all of demography. It's the denser you get, the lower the fertility is.

So, yeah. And I think Emil

Simone Collins: Kierkegaard has done some interesting blog posts on how cities for a very, very, very long time have been fertility shredders. How for ages

Dan Hess: and ages, shredders is the term. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: But for him, fertility,

Dan Hess: fertility shredders, he talks about the term on the internet. It's been floating around for like 15 years is IQ shredders because the cities draw in the smartest people.

Um, you know, for, for economic purposes, economic purposes, and then they don't have children. Yeah. But just think of high fertility groups. So, so America has to answer. We know the answer that I think one of the greatest inventions that America has had is like the suburbs. Cause the suburbs. Uh, can let people have space and a yard.

And

Malcolm Collins: [00:26:00] the Yemi people wouldn't like this

Dan Hess: is the answer. Oh, no. No, it's a wonderful thing. Like God bless urban sprawl. Like seriously, you have to like pro natalists have to understand this because the correlation is so incredibly strong. Like one reason, and I was in Japan, Uh, with my family in September. Um, and I got, we were, we were staying on the outskirts of Tokyo.

We rent, you know, Airbnb is a thing in Japan and also, and if you have a big family, like we do, uh, you have to rent a house, you know, there, you can't, you can't be staying in a hotel, you know, anyway, but, but we were, so we, we, I got to see, uh, Tokyo and, and Japan up close and, and. And the urban landscape is, is the reason that it's almost impossible for, because Japan is actually extremely pronatalist now, like they have been trying to be pronatalist for like 30 years.

And people in Japan are really positive on kids, but Japan has this problem, which is that, uh, you know, Tokyo is [00:27:00] like a sea of urban high rises. And that like structure just has. Is associated with super low fertility. So that that's one dynamic. And the other dynamic is that all the young people are just drawn to Tokyo.

And so they just keep coming to Tokyo where they go on to have like very small families. And meanwhile, uh, in the countryside of Japan, like there are all these suburban looking house in the beautiful Japanese countryside, like our. Available for like a song. Like they're, they're practically giving them away, but nobody wants to live there because everybody's drawn to these urban high rises.

And so it's like this, this elevator effect or this, this, everybody's just drawn into the city where they, where they keep having low fertility. The, the TFR in Tokyo is like 1. 0. And this is, you have to understand that this is now a very pronatal culture and still because of the urban architecture, they can't, uh, they can't break through.

So what I, what was so. Wonderful about the suburbs is that people are [00:28:00] still integrated with the urban economy. Uh, they can still be connected with the urban economy, but they're not in, uh, these urban high raises, high rises. And then, you know, the, the, the, the density. I'd

Malcolm Collins: promote a totally different answer.

I think exurbs and, and building up the exurbs. Oh, yeah. You want to

Simone Collins: take it further.

Malcolm Collins: Office economy.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yes. Well, so yeah, I think about what Daniel's talking about here. And also I have to, I'll find a link of, to the email Kierkegaard sub stack article where he talks about this and he does talk about like, what, what distance from cities is optimal?

Uh, because that's kind of the question, right? Like

Malcolm Collins: where does the human farmer, everyone needs to own their plot of land where they can grow food. Um, and it can commute to the city. Once a month if they need

Simone Collins: to. But yeah, what you're saying though is based on where we're going. Yeah. With the, the economy that in the end being even further

Dan Hess: away.

And here's another chart that I'm, that I, that we can put [00:29:00] on the screen if you'd like. This is, this is actually by the Institute for Family Studies, which is awesome because you can find, uh, you know, so much, such a wealth of data and all the fertility factors. But here, what we're looking at is, you know, Uh, the fertility, you know, for rural suburbs and city center.

So like, uh, the fertility is far higher for rural than the suburbs, which is far higher than the city center. Um, so like the, the less dense you can have, the better it is for fertility. And this seems, uh, This seems to be like such a robust relationship. This is like one of the iron laws of demography, uh, is the more urbanized the, the, the lower the fertility.

So, so that's a major factor. No. So argument in your

Simone Collins: favor, Malcolm.

Dan Hess: So, yeah, so, so the, the further out you can get, um, yeah, and, and work from home is also a wonderful factor for this reason. So if you, you know, and, and part of it is like the, the burden of childcare. Like, like one problem in Korea is that people have to, you know, [00:30:00] have a hundred activities for their kids and child, child care is so difficult.

Um, but if you just have a house with a yard, the kids can just be out in the yard, like, like bouncing around on the trampoline or, uh, playing with, uh, You know, playing in the backyard and you don't, you don't even have to supervise them much, you know, cause they can just play and, and you, they're with an earshot and, uh, it, it, it just incredibly lowers the, the burden.

And there's also like the psychological effect of like feeling crowded, like, like, you, you know, the mouse experiment, right? Um, Yeah, the

Malcolm Collins: mouse utopia experiments continue. Right.

Dan Hess: Yeah. Yeah. So the, the, the denser it is like density itself has like a really negative, you know, psychological impact. So, and I don't

Malcolm Collins: think that these dent centers economically make sense anymore.

They have become economically unrealistic. And a lot of people are like, what? No, there's so many efficiency gains. And it's like, yeah, but all the efficiency gains are offset by how progressive they become, which ends up creating these giant [00:31:00] bureaucracies, which ends up making them less efficient than.

less urban areas. So on paper, they look more efficient, but because they allow and encourage this ultra progressive mindset, they become

Dan Hess: less efficient. Yeah. So this is something I want to show here. Here's another, another thing. Here's just a quick thing related to density here. This is a map of South Korea by density.

And here, here people in South Korea. Concentrate in an insane people, you know, people talk about South Korea. Oh, they can't, they have no choice. It's a tiny country, you know, that's, it's, it's going to be dense. No, it's actually by choice because you know, so much of South Korea is like empty. It's

Malcolm Collins: like culture.

One of the weirdest things about South Korea is if you drive outside of the major cities, when you see the suburban towns, what you will see is a cluster of like. skyscrapers next to each other, and then nothing else. Um, it is the most bizarre [00:32:00] thing you have ever seen. Yeah, it's like three

Simone Collins: high rises and a mall

Dan Hess: complex.

Right, so this is a terrible, this is, you know, cause, Yeah. So this, I, I think, I think Brian Kaplan is making a big mistake with his book. I think it's, you know, and that's my, that's my, that's my position and I'm sticking with it now because yeah, because he's actually a pronatalist, but he, he's got, you know, he had that book.

I think I even have it on myself. Um, selfish reasons to have more kids. Yeah. Here it is right here. Here we go. Here we go. There it is.

Malcolm Collins: You're saying that these buildings will be here for, you know, a hundred years. No, they'll be rotting in a hundred years. Look up like Detroit blight porn. I'll add some to this.

You

Dan Hess: know, I, I know what, well, this is, this is an interesting thing because actually, if you look at Japan and I was just there, um, It's not, even though the TFR in Tokyo is the lowest in all of Japan, like Tokyo is full of people because people are like coming out from the countryside [00:33:00] and it's actually the country where the countryside where the fertility rate is higher, that is empty in Japan, because everybody keeps flocking to the city.

So, So actually it's the, it's the countryside where the fertility rate is higher that actually will give you the despair porn in, in Japan where we're of all the rotting, uh, houses, uh, which is, which is kind of ironic. So it's, it's not necessarily true that the places that have the lowest fertility rate are going to be the.

Places that empty out because people are keeping, keep, uh, being drawn to the city. So I think like, if I was actually, if I was king of Korea, if they still imagine they still have Kings and, and for some reason they make it me like that, not, not so likely, but if I was, I would like. Order everybody into the countryside.

And then I would like, uh, you know, make sure that nobody's in the buildings cause I, I love Korea and I don't want to hurt anybody, but I would then demolish all the, these, these skyscrapers, because I really believe that, that these, that these buildings, these, these tall. Uh, [00:34:00] you know, uh, dense skyscrapers are are a big cause of the ultra low fertility in in all of, you know, this is true in Shanghai.

This is true in Beijing. This is true in all these agencies. So, so I think we have to be incredibly careful because if you throw up a high rise that's You know, that could be drawing people in for a hundred years and that could be killing fertility in a country for a hundred years. So I don't think we have to worry about

Malcolm Collins: that.

Okay. Okay. I don't think any of these high rises are going to be fully operational in a hundred years.

Dan Hess: Okay. Anyway, I want to, I'll move on to some other factors here. Uh, let's see, let's see. Here's something that is completely different. Um, let me see.

Simone Collins: We've just been to so many cities at this point, where the buildings are 30 years old and crumbling.

So it's kind of scary. It's a

Malcolm Collins: critical mass. We're going to have a level of urban blight and nature recapture that people can't [00:35:00] imagine. And I think what we'll be dealing with in a hundred years is rats eating people's babies in Manhattan. You know, that's, that's going to be a major issue.

Dan Hess: Um, Okay, so this is a completely new fertility

Simone Collins: factor.

Okay, so we're looking at a graph, a share of young people aged 25 to 34 living with parents. Oh no.

Dan Hess: Okay, this is painful, but you look at these numbers and it's like insane. Oh my gosh, in

Simone Collins: Spain, it's 37. 2. I want to be

Malcolm Collins: clear here. This is inversely correlated with their economic success often. Yeah. Oh, wait.

Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm wrong here. No, it's correlated with their economic success. The more economically successful, sorry, I thought the colors were reverse.

Dan Hess: No, no, no. Okay. What we're looking at is the share of young people living with their parents. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So it's much lower in the economically successful regions and much higher in places like, I'd really be interested

Simone Collins: to see.

No, no, no. Malcolm, you've got it wrong. It's lower in regions that I

Dan Hess: can, let me, let me explain [00:36:00] this, this, this map what we're seeing a little bit. So this sheds a lot of light on why the fertility in the Catholic countries is so low. Um, so we can see Poland, we can Poland in Poland, 43%. Of young people age 25 to 34 live with their parents in Italy.

It's 47 percent in Spain. It's 37 percent as compared with, uh, like in Sweden, it's 4%. Yeah. So, so we can see like, uh, this incredibly dramatic difference across Europe, um, uh, of, uh, And, and we know, as you guys know, uh, the, the fertility rate in, in Spain and Italy and also Poland are incredibly low, even though they're Catholic countries.

And I would argue that this, you know, ironically, you know, having a, a close family culture can be bad in the, in, in the sense [00:37:00] that the parents coddle their, But

Malcolm Collins: I want to see, I don't know, I find very little interesting about this to be honest, because I, this only is useful to me if I'm seeing it in contrast with the high fertility countries of equivalent economic success, where this just looks like a graph of economic success of each country.

Like if I could contrast Greece or Italy was Turkey or, or something like that, that would be interesting. I don't want to highlight.

Simone Collins: One thing though, which is that another thing that correlates with a better relationship with parents or parent relationship satisfaction is I think higher depression. So I think a lot of parents think I need to give my kids this amazing childhood.

They need to be my best friend. I would love for them to continue to live with me. I'll support their lifestyle, but what you're, you're creating while they're, they will really genuinely like you more. They're also sadder. They're not getting married to your point [00:38:00] and they are not economically.

Dan Hess: I understand your point and it is a valid point, but, but there is, um, and it'll take me a minute to, I don't, I don't want to throw up this, this chart cause I'm going to have to look for it.

But you see the same relationship in the United States where in the States where people leave the nest earlier. They all have a higher fertility rate. So this is like the flyover country. Very interesting. Well, you can send it to us afterwards and I'll add it. And you can find it very easily on my Twitter.

Uh, if you just search for, you know, I think even better drive people

Malcolm Collins: to your

Dan Hess: Twitter. Yeah. If you search like launch, like at more births, you search launch because I talk about it as failure to launch. Um, but you know, so, so country like in the flyover States where in the States where people, you know, get out of the house earlier, you know, and are on their own earlier, they have a much higher fertility.

Malcolm Collins: It's been great to have you on. I love all these thoughts. I love all these graphs. I know our audience will. Uh, [00:39:00] you, you can join our discord server too, which apparently some fans started and now it's actually like bopping. Um, it was, it was pernicious conversation, which is cool. Um, everyone lists themselves with how many kids they have next to their names.

It's happened organically. I didn't ask for this. So you, you'd be high stat. You got six kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You're living the dream.

Dan Hess: Yeah, yeah, no, I, I have a, I have more, more factors that we can share and we can, we can talk more, but I guess we're reaching the end of the end of our time here. If

Malcolm Collins: you had a few more graphs you wanted to discuss quickly, pull up the ones that you're most interested in.

I just want

Dan Hess: to let's talk about a couple more facts. I have one more. I have another, uh, spicy take here. I'll try to. Um, let's see if I can pull this up.

Let's, let's gimme a,

so you may appreciate this [00:40:00] one. Um,

Simone Collins: all right, let's take a look at this. All right, so we're looking at the average.

Dan Hess: So this is a graph by ala. Oh,

Simone Collins: I, this looks familiar. Oh,

Dan Hess: interesting. So, uh, this is her own, uh, data and, and it's, it's great that she's so. You know, honest about it, but this is, you know, and I, there's other data that, that backs it, backs up this same, uh, trend where, uh, actually the more partners somebody has, the lower their fertility is, you know, so, and actually, uh, and I can,

Simone Collins: also just being poly, regardless of your partner count.

Seems to

Malcolm Collins: make, yeah, but I also see something here that you might not be noticing is the jump in number of kids in poly relationships between 45 and 45 and 50, um, which [00:41:00] implies that they're counting kids that are brought in from alternate And Partners in relationships. Um, they're considering their kids.

I know she said is your partner, but I bet that that's what's causing that. So you think that

Simone Collins: poly is even artificially inflated in this graph? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: because I almost know a woman is having kids over 45.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's

Malcolm Collins: fair. And this is showing a big jump in the number of kids per poly relationship

Dan Hess: after the age of 40.

I want to, I'll stop sharing this and share one more chart here that's related to this. Um, so here we go.

Simone Collins: I mean, I think that the high correlatory factor here, we're talking about the depressing effect of multiple partners or more partners on fertility is what are you living for in life? Are you living for a broader purpose or your value set?

Or are you living for fun and pleasure? And if you're living for fun and pleasure, I could see partner count being higher and kids being lower because that's

Dan Hess: just how it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, That's right. But this is a trend that is not new. It's [00:42:00] actually, this is, this is a chart. You can look at the number of children.

This is for men. Uh, this is the number of children by the number by partner count since age 18. And the, you know, people who think, you know, That it's the players. It's the, like the Mac daddies who, who have, uh, tons of partners have the highest fertility. That's not true. It's actually, you know, the, the highest fertility are the people that had very few partners.

Um, and the, I think a big correlation for this, uh, is early marriage. So the earlier, uh, you know, if one of the most important factors for high fertility is, is early marriage. And if you want to understand, you know, the baby boom, you know, which, you know, 1946 to 1964 baby boom, like the OG baby boom, like what caused that?

Um, A big part of that was that people were just getting married [00:43:00] young and, and in high numbers. And so, so that, so getting married young, it would be correlated, of course, with a lower partner count. So, so that may be a big part of what we're seeing, but this, you know, people who think that they have to, you know, be a player with, with, with tons of partners in order to have a lot of kids have it.

I mean, if you're

Malcolm Collins: sleeping with lots of people and you're not having kids with them, that's just masturbation with another person's body. You know, um, I, I had Simone tweet recently, uh, non reproductive sex is a fetish. Yeah, it is. It is a fetish because it's, it's something that you find arousing that has nothing to do with reproduction.

And, and, uh, so that's, uh, that's because people always accuse us. They're like, Oh, you have a breeding fetish. And it's like, one, it's disgusting that your world perspective is the only thing that can motivate someone is what arouses them, which is a lot of like ultra leftist worldviews, like their entire identity is based around what arouses them.

Um, and so they assume that everyone else's must be because [00:44:00] they're sociopaths and that's the way sociopaths see the world, um, or at least narcissists do. But also, also what you're seeing here. Yeah. Oh, but

Simone Collins: three also, all of our children were created through IVFs. The breeding fetish kind of goes out

Dan Hess: the window.

Yeah, yeah. And that's something that I wish, uh, you know, conservatives would, would, would kind of, uh, let go of is this, this hang up about, uh, They

Malcolm Collins: mostly are. It's interesting. The conservatives that have a hang up about this, like they're not having kids. Like, you know, well, who did we meet at the prenatal conference?

Like Pat Buchanan, who had a big hang up of this and all of his kids have been victim of the Catholic priesthood. Um, and, and

Dan Hess: he went, Pat Buchanan was not there at the natal conference. I mean, who am I thinking of? We were talking about, no, Pat Fagan? I don't

Malcolm Collins: know. I, I feel like it was

Dan Hess: a Pat

Malcolm Collins: Catholic guy.

Yeah, but he got, we got in a big fight at the conference. Whoever it was, it was like a hardcore old Catholic guy and he had three kids and every single one of them had joined the priesthood [00:45:00]

Dan Hess: and he has no Pat Fagan. Cause he's got eight kids. He would, I remember because every, you know, they, they, they went around the room asking who has the most kids and like, he won, he like, Oh, it

Malcolm Collins: might've been, I guess I assumed was all of the kids that he was mentioning who joined the priesthood that maybe he had, So we might still have some that are having kids.

Okay.

Simone Collins: So you just tie the 10%. It's fine.

Dan Hess: It's not.

Malcolm Collins: Um, but it's, it's, it's, um, you know, uh, uh, these, these cultural groups, like, as I've mentioned, the, the cultural groups that are being most hit of the religious communities by fertility collapse are, uh, Catholic Christians and Orthodox Christians. Are the two highest hit of all Western cultural groups.

Uh, Jews aren't hit that bad. Protestants are hit a little, but not that bad. Uh, Muslims are hit actually worse than Protestants or Jews. Um, uh, but still do a little better than Catholic and Orthodox communities. Uh, but the communities that motivated high fertility through these strict restrictions around, uh, like [00:46:00] when life begins, condoms, et cetera.

Don't appear to be able to motivate fertility anymore in a modern ecosystem.

Dan Hess: Well, yeah, it depends. I mean, with Catholic fertility, it's hard to tell and it's hard to tell where things are going because you have a big contrast also between Catholics in Europe and Catholics in America. And I don't know if maybe Catholics in America, I

Malcolm Collins: need to be clear classics in Europe and in Latin America, which are both collapsing.

Dan Hess: Yeah, that is, that is true. That is true. Now, now somehow in, in, in the United States, it seems Catholics have a higher fertility. And I don't know if it may have to do with the fact that they're a minority in America. That could be it. Yeah. So being a minority, you know, we think that's a big factor. Yeah.

Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: do think that's a big factor,

Dan Hess: which means the sense of being a renegade, like you're not going to feel like a renegade if you're a Catholic in Italy. I'm

Simone Collins: feeling like there's something to fight for because you are the other surrounded by a very different group. Yeah. In hostile

Malcolm Collins: land, [00:47:00] which is interesting because a lot of conservatives fight for the opposite of that.

They're like, we need like one country, one people. And it's like, that's the exact opposite of what's going to succeed. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It does not correlate with success fertility wise.

Dan Hess: Yeah, well, a lot of things are changing a lot of, so, you know, as you have said, you know, culture cultures that, uh, you know, that have been in this situation for a while can, can learn to, uh, to fortify themselves.

Like one example that's been exploding, um, of a high fertility subculture, uh, is homeschool families. This is what we talked about, but actually. And, and homeschool, uh, families are kind of a renegade culture that, that. Wait, have you, do you

Malcolm Collins: have statistics on

Dan Hess: homeschooling fertility rates? Let me see if I can pull that up.

It'll take a moment. But if you, if you don't mind, uh, waiting for a moment, we, and you can then cut out, cut out that time or something.

Simone Collins: That is really useful for us to have stats on like hard stats. So we

Malcolm Collins: appreciate it. You need to hop off in a

Simone Collins: second though. Yeah. Oh [00:48:00] God, we're running up on time. We're always running up on time.

This is our life now.

But I mean, we've been, we've been arguing this for the longest time, that When you finally remove people from sterilizing educational platforms, and of course, you talked about that when we in our previous conversation, where at public schools, people are literally being taught to see population growth and reproductive reproduction as a bad thing that hurts the environment.

Is it any wonder that going to homeschool suddenly helps you out?

Dan Hess: All right. Here, I'm going to share something related, some data related to homeschooling right now. Nice. All right. Cause I do have that. And you, this is, this is one thing that's really wonderful about my feed is that you can search at more births for whatever topic.

And there's a good chance that I will have written about it.

Simone Collins: Now you are the kind of the, the reference point in encyclopedia. If you need, well, I

Dan Hess: really want to, want to Uh, give 40.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is this is fascinating. Yeah. [00:49:00] 48 percent of homeschooling households have three or more children

Dan Hess: Yeah, this is a very important thing we It turns out like you need to you need to have a norm of three children as like the baseline In order to just have replacement fertility because in our world today now approximately one third Of young people will have zero children.

Simone Collins: It's also compelling stat because homeschooling is not easier when you have more kids per se.

Malcolm Collins: So presumably

Simone Collins: it's harder. So yeah, you have more kids to educate. You would think that home, that parents of more children would be more motivated to send them out, send them to public school, not have to pay for them.

Use food services. These are

Malcolm Collins: great stats that will definitely be repeating. And it has been so good to have you on and people should definitely check out your profile on

Simone Collins: Twitter. It's like the encyclopedia of demographic collection. I think that's the most

Dan Hess: important thing. It's not merely [00:50:00] collapse porn.

It's not, it's not, there's a lot of, there's a lot of levers and there's a lot of ways to, to increase fertility in every little, every little bit helps. Because, you know, getting from like one 3 to like one 5 or one 6, you know, makes such a dramatic difference for the future because it all compounds.

Totally agree. That why you were

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's been great to have you

Simone Collins: on. Yeah. Thanks again for coming on. This was really fun. And,

Malcolm Collins: uh, thanks for your time. Have a spectacular

Dan Hess: day. Yeah. Thank you so much. You guys also. Thank you. Thank you. It's been wonderful. Ciao.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Greg McKeown on Essentialism and What Really Matters