Birth Rates: Are We Running Out of Babies??

Birth rates are falling all over the world, and some people are freaking out, saying this could tank our society — and even spell the end of humans. In the U. S., so-called pronatalism is having a major moment, with lots of people making the case for more babies — President Trump has called for a “baby boom” and has pledged to be “the fertilization president.” So today, we’re going to find out: Is humanity really hurtling toward population disaster? And if this IS a problem — is it even possible to flip the switch from baby bust to baby boom? To find out, we speak with economists Prof. Jisoo Hwang and economics lecturer Dr. Neha Deopa. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsFertilityRates In this episode, we cover: (00:00) People are freaking out about the birth rate (02:51) Are fertility rates really declining? (07:42) Why South Korea’s fertility rate is so low (14:51) How low fertility rates can mess up society (20:24) Can influencers bump up fertility rates?? (28:17) Which government policies could bump up fertility rates? (35:43) What SHOULD we do if we want people to have more babies? This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell, with help from Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, Michelle Dang, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Our executive producer is Wendy Zukerman. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Research help from Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, So Wylie, Emma Munger and Bumi Hidaka. A very special thanks to all the researchers who spoke to me for this episode, including Professor Rannveig Kaldager Hart, Dr. Janna Bergsvik, Professor Amy Tsui, Dr. Gretchen Donehower, Dr. Emily Klancher Merchant and Professor Landon Schnabel. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Blythe Terrell, filling in for Wendy Zukerman, and you are listening to Science Versus.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  This is the show that pits facts against falling fertility.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Today, we're talking about the claim that people are having fewer and fewer babies, and that it could be bad news for humanity. We've actually been hearing about this fear for years, but recently, it has made its way to the White House.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  President Donald Trump is pushing for a baby boom.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  We want more babies, to put it very nicely. I'll be known as the fertilization president, and that's okay. That's not bad. I've been called much worse.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Vice President J.D. Vance has gotten in on this, too.

• 0:45Speaker 03

  So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  And it's not just the US. This idea that people need to have more babies has been popping up all over the world, with headlines about low birth rates in parts of Europe.

• 1:00Speaker 04

  Italy is suffering through one of the worst demographic crises anywhere in the world. Spain's population is disappearing.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Plus Japan and South Korea.

• 1:10Speaker 05

  The Korean population crisis has reached a new milestone. The nation's population could freefall by 85% over the next century.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  China, which famously had a policy limiting couples to one child only, has done a 180. For the first time, Beijing has announced a nationwide childcare subsidy policy in a bid to boost the country's birth rate. Meanwhile, in the US, there's actually a whole movement building around this of people called pro-natalists. And they seem to have the ear of President Trump. Some of the proposals we're hearing about to get more babies include stuff like $5,000 cash bonuses for parents, classes to teach women about their menstrual cycles, and even a grand prize for the most fertile among us. A national medal of motherhood for women with six or more children. So there's a few reasons that people are eager to turn this around.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Like, we hear that a baby bust will totally mess up society and potentially tank the economy. And we also hear that it's actually an existential problem, that we might even be on our way to extinction as a species.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  So today, we are asking, is that right? How worried should we be about this? And if you want to boost fertility rates, how do you do it? Because when it comes to fertility, there's a lot of...

• 2:32Speaker 02

  We want more babies, to put it very nicely.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  But then, there's science.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Coming up, after the break.

• 2:48Speaker 06

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• 4:52Speaker 00

  All right, welcome back. This is Blythe Terrell. I'm the editor at Science Versus. I'm here with senior producer Rose Rimler. Hey, Rose.

• 4:57Speaker 08

  Hi, Blythe.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Welcome, welcome.

• 4:59Speaker 08

  Thanks. Actually, you told me I had to be here, so.

• 5:03Speaker 08

  No, but it's a very interesting topic. Although I've noticed, Blythe, that you in particular, you seem particularly obsessed with it. So why? Why does this grab you so much?

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think what it is, is that there's this motley crew of this band of misfits, right, that are all interested in this?

• 5:20Speaker 08

  Raising the alarm?

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, not that they're misfits, but I mean, you have these sort of pronatalists, and you have some very techie people. You've got your Elon Musks and other tech bros. You have that group of it. You've sort of got, you have your right-wing Christians on the same boat sometimes, like, hey, we really gotta populate, populate the earth, you know? And it's just this interesting group together? And I just wanted to know, like, okay, so are they right? Like, is there something going on here?

• 5:50Speaker 08

  Yeah, I'd like to know that, too.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  All right, so to start off here, just like right out of the gate, one thing that the pronatalists are right about is that in lots of places, birth rates are going down. Like, yes, people are having fewer kids on average. And that is true in basically every country in the world.

• 6:08Speaker 08

  Really?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 08

  Oh. Wow.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  I've shocked you already.

• 6:12Speaker 08

  I thought it was just like, I thought you were just gonna say the US and some parts of Europe and...

• 6:16Speaker 00

  No, the trend, the downward trend for birth rates, for what's called, for something called specifically total fertility rate, is happening almost everywhere. And it has been for decades.

• 6:26Speaker 08

  Huh.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Okay, so if you take the US, the total fertility rate, which is basically like a snapshot of the kind of average number of kids one woman will have in her lifetime, is a shorthand for it. That average is, right now, 1.62 births per woman.

• 6:41Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  And that's actually the lowest it's ever been. So the concern is, if you want the population to stay where it is, if you want it not to fall, the total fertility rate needs to be 2.1 kids per woman.

• 6:52Speaker 08

  Okay, and that's 2.1 because some of these pregnancies, the person who's born will die, won't have their own children. It's kind of like a little bit of an insurance policy, I guess.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Exactly. And just to say, like, this is talked about in terms of births per woman, but it's really per couple, per set of parents. Because you're using that 2.1 births to replace those two people, whoever they may be.

• 7:13Speaker 08

  Right.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Right? And it's just like, it's easier to track what comes out of uterus than what comes out of a fetus.

• 7:21Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  I don't know, I'm not sure I want to know where your mind went, but I can see you... I can see you.

• 7:35Speaker 08

  Let's move on.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Let's move on.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  So the idea is, for the population to be stable, to not go up or down, the total fertility rate is, needs to be 2.1.

• 7:46Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  And according to the United Nations in 2024, the global total fertility rate was 2.2.

• 7:53Speaker 08

  Oh.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  So in the US, it's 1.62. As of right now, it's 2.2 worldwide. So it's above that replacement level.

• 7:59Speaker 08

  So if you're looking at the population of Earth, the human population of Earth, we're good?

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, at this moment.

• 8:06Speaker 08

  Uh huh.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  But, um, pretty consistently, it's going down. And so people are like, oh, even though at a global level, it's above this 2.1 replacement level right now, people are like, oh, well, it's probably gonna go down if that's what it's been doing for decades. And so scientists do estimate that global population will peak in maybe like 60 years and then start to fall. Like, that is what current estimates do show.

• 8:30Speaker 08

  Okay, but is that a bad thing? Because you used to hear a lot about people worrying about overpopulation. So is that good news?

• 8:41Speaker 00

  You know, that's a great question because like actually even just talking about this out in the world, as you know I am, whenever I bring this up to people, they're like, oh, population might be going down, like, isn't that good? Good for the environment, fewer people using up resources, spewing out trash, greenhouse gases, like all the crap that humans are currently doing. But a lot of scientists are like, actually, it's a little more complicated than that. They don't really think that this is going to be a climate solution. And that's basically because the population isn't expected to actually drop soon enough to like really reverse our climate problems, like to actually have as big of an impact as it would need to have to sort of save our asses.

• 9:18Speaker 08

  Basically saying the stuff we need to do to reduce emissions has to be done before we'd start to actually use fewer resources.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  That is exactly what what people say.

• 9:27Speaker 08

  Okay, that does make sense.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  So it's not going to fix climate, scientists argue, to have fewer people, to have lower birth rates. And this also means that we are pretty far from the population dropping in this super extreme way, right? Like this idea that humans might go extinct.

• 9:41Speaker 08

  Yeah, okay.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  But there definitely is some nutty stuff that can start happening when your birth rates go really low. So let's talk about that. And I want to do that, Rose, by taking you to South Korea.

• 9:54Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Because South Korea is the country with the lowest total fertility rate in the world.

• 9:59Speaker 08

  What is it?

• 10:00Speaker 00

  It is 0.75.

• 10:03Speaker 08

  Oh, wow. That's now that you told me what to... I understand that that's really low now.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So that is the 2024 number. And actually, I talked to this economist about it.

• 10:17Speaker 09

  It's that crazy number. It's a number that I think people, I mean, all Koreans know the number now because they saw it in the news so much. But it's still a number that it's difficult to imagine because we just never lived in a society with a 0.75 fertility rate.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  That is Jisoo Hwang. She is a professor studying economics at Seoul National University in South Korea. So basically, a 0.75 birth rate means that if nothing else happens, your next generation, in terms of people born, is going to be less than half the size of your current generation.

• 10:52Speaker 08

  Hmm, uh huh.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Right? So like, every couple is producing less than one kid.

• 10:57Speaker 08

  Uh huh, right.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  And so I wanted to talk to Jisoo because she did a whole bunch of work to figure out, like, how South Korea got here, what's going on. And there is a few things that contributed to this, but I'm gonna zoom in on one of the biggies.

• 11:10Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  So for Jisoo, her spidey sense on this started tingling about 10 years ago, when she was a grad student. And she noticed something kind of surprising going on.

• 11:18Speaker 09

  More and more of the highly educated women were not getting married. And now that I think about it, that was like the precursor to all of this happening.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  So Jisoo noticed this with her friends, actually, she told me. She was like, oh, a lot of them have gone to college, maybe gotten good jobs, but they were staying single. And in Korea, there was actually a name for a woman like this. She was called a "gold miss."

• 11:43Speaker 09

  So the term "gold miss," I'm not the one who coined it, it was becoming a popular word in Korea to refer to women who are highly educated, so they're gold. They're highly educated and they can have, they have high potential earnings. They already have high-paying jobs, but they're a miss, so they didn't get married.

• 12:02Speaker 08

  That's actually a very neutral, not, like, somewhat flattering term. So much better than, like, "old maid" or whatever.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. So Jisoo, when she started digging into this, she realized that a lot of this trend of women not getting married, really low fertility, it seemed to be related to this massive change that had happened in South Korea's economy.

• 12:22Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  So if you look back, like, 50-plus years ago, South Korea was a really, really poor country. But then it really shifted. Like, the country starts building up its industries, starts exporting a ton of stuff. There's lots of South Korean companies that are super successful, global companies.

• 12:38Speaker 08

  K-pop.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah, K-pop is a part of this, definitely a part of this. So, all of this economic growth, all of this change, it also meant that, like, way more women started getting educated and getting jobs. In some cases, really demanding jobs, really long hours. So there was this, like, big shift in women's roles in the workforce, workplace.

• 13:00Speaker 08

  Uh-huh, OK.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  But Jisoo told me that as this education and workplace shift was happening, what they did not see was a huge shift in women's roles at home.

• 13:13Speaker 09

  And that's because, you know, our norms about, you know, what it means to be a good mother, or a good wife, or a good worker, you know, these kind of social norms, they can't change that quickly.

• 13:25Speaker 08

  So you mean, you went, go to college, you get a higher education, you become a dentist, or a lawyer, or whatever, but then you still gotta go home and, like, do all the cooking and cleaning and child caring? That's the expectation?

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, and obviously, like, painting with a really broad brush, right? But yes, so yes, Jisoo told me in Korea, women are still largely supposed to do the childcare, largely supposed to do most of the work around the house. And she said that it is bigger than, like, any one couple's attitude about this.

• 13:51Speaker 09

  And so it's not like someone's fault. It's not like, so even if your husband is, for example, very supportive, and he has very, you know, egalitarian gender attitudes, it may still not work, because like, the whole society, all the institutions around us are not designed to, you know, operate with both mom and dad working full-time. So, for example, in Korea, elementary school, first grade, second grade, they come home at 1:00 PM.

• 14:16Speaker 08

  So someone has to be home for the kid?

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:18Speaker 08

  There's like, these barriers to having a kid.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, if both parents are working, there's these huge barriers to having a kid.

• 14:24Speaker 08

  Which is true here as well. Mm. Yeah, I mean, you're, we're talking about Korea because it has a distinct issue, but it's some of these issues, so far the issues you're bringing up seem fairly broad. Like, these also seem like issues here in the US.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, they are. They are.

• 14:39Speaker 08

  And yet, we're 1.6.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  And we're 1.6.

• 14:41Speaker 08

  We're smoking their asses. So, explain that.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Actually, I can. The argument is that the speed mattered. Like, for example, Jisoo told me over there, women's education levels ramped up extremely fast.

• 14:58Speaker 09

  So from a country where almost no woman were college graduates, now more than half of the women are college graduates.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Okay. They see that this change happened really fast. And in the US, it happened, but it just happened slower because the US has been stronger economically for longer.

• 15:17Speaker 08

  There's been more time for adjustments to be made.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:20Speaker 08

  A little easier.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And there's other stuff that could be a play here, too, like cultural differences, things like that.

• 15:26Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  But to zoom out, though, I will say, you know, in a lot of countries, as women get more education, better-paying jobs, our time becomes more expensive. That was one thing that Jisoo kept pointing out. She's like, your time, if you can get a job that pays you more money, the cost benefit changes for having a kid, especially if you're going to be the one who's expected to stay home, especially if you don't have reliable childcare, like, all these things, right? And all of this changes the calculus of having a kid.

• 15:58Speaker 09

  We are all given 24 hours a day. Something needs to give. So some women are choosing, you know what, then, I don't think I can take this package of marriage and childcare. I'll just forego having children. I'll forego getting married.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  So it's not necessarily just that people are like, my job is way more fun than hanging out with a kid all day.

• 16:19Speaker 09

  No, no, no, no.

• 16:23Speaker 09

  It's not about that, right?

• 16:25Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's more about a calculation of what I can make happen in my life and feel good about doing.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  So bigger picture, even though there's other reasons people aren't having as many kids, some economists do argue that this gender shift in education and jobs and just overall more autonomy for women, it could be the biggest reason that we've seen this change worldwide.

• 16:47Speaker 08

  Women becoming more educated and more likely to work.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so that's a little bit about the why, like the how we got here. And now I want to stay in South Korea to talk about what can happen next. So, you know, using South Korea as like sort of a worst case scenario, what does it look like when your fertility rate goes so low? And I want to start with kids. Because when you have fewer births, you have fewer kids. And there's a ton of headlines about this, actually. Like, South Korea becoming basically like a kid desert. Have you seen these?

• 17:23Speaker 08

  No, but I, that was my first thought. It was like, it sounds a little sad.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, and there's tons of reports around this. You know, this is happening. The population of kids is shrinking in ways that are like, that is actually noticeable. I mean, there's reports of hundreds and even thousands of schools just completely having to shut down. You know, tiny numbers of kids in classes. I saw a headline the other day about a primary school that opened with one first grader, Rose.

• 17:48Speaker 08

  Oh, wow.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  One first grader. Can you imagine being the only first grader in your class?

• 17:52Speaker 08

  That's so sad.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  There's reports of them turning the schools into other things, like old folks homes.

• 17:57Speaker 08

  Well, that's telling.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And Jisoo said that she has noticed this out in the world.

• 18:03Speaker 09

  Walking around, you see so much more older people than, relatively than children.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Is it like you're bird watching and you're like, "Look, it's a one-year-old"?

• 18:13Speaker 09

  Right, right. It's much more difficult to see a baby in, in the, just walking around in the streets than seeing older people, right? Very old people. It's much easier to see very old people than to see babies.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the other thing about this is it can build on itself. So if you're thinking, "Oh, like, maybe I do want to have a kid," and you look around and you're like, "Oh, there's no school."

• 18:39Speaker 08

  Right.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  There's no pediatrician, there's no other kids on the playground.

• 18:42Speaker 08

  There's no infrastructure in place.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Right. So that's a thing, too. Like, you may, maybe you hesitate. And then the next thing that happens that freaks people out about all this, it relates to the older people, right? Like, we just heard that we have way fewer kids and proportionally, we have way more older people in the population, right?

• 19:03Speaker 08

  And they need someone to take care of them.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Yes. Not only do they need someone to take care of them, they also need like, Money to take care of them.

• 19:11Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Because there's two pieces of this, right? Like, there's like, there's the idea that you can run into like caregiver shortages, which we do hear about. Um, but the thing that actually economists seem to be a little more freaked out about is that like, okay, when you get old, what happens? You're too old to work, you retire, you maybe have a pension, but you also generally have healthcare. And the way we pay for those things is through taxes. I know, taxes, woo, bro, I can see you, I can see your eyes glazing over. Um, but it really matters. This tax thing actually is really important because what happens is if you don't have people, younger people in your population, you end up with fewer people in the workforce, you end up with fewer people paying taxes, and then you end up not being able to pay

• 19:55Speaker 00

  for these programs for your older people.

• 19:58Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Plus, we use taxes to pay for other stuff, right? Like roads, parks, fire departments. So all this could get messy. And obviously, like, South Korea is trying to figure this out. They are very aware of this problem, of course. But it could get bad. Here's what Jisoo told me.

• 20:15Speaker 09

  You know, in the extreme scenario where we don't do anything, um, then those kind of systems will collapse, right? Like, we won't have a public pension, for example, if we don't do anything. Um, at least the way it is now.

• 20:29Speaker 00

  Well, it makes sense, though, because it's like, the whole society is structured in such a way that young people support old people. So without the young people, the old people are screwed.

• 20:38Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  And that's bad for us future old people. Yeah, so South Korea, actually, scientists call it a super-aged society because more than 20% of the people are older than 65. And a lot of them are actually living in poverty. And this isn't just because of the population stuff, like, there's other reasons, too. But South Korea actually has, like, one of the highest rates of elderly poverty among rich countries. And they have, like, really high suicide rates also.

• 21:05Speaker 08

  Hmm, Jesus.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  And at least in some cases, according to the research, that's because people are like, I can't, you know, can't afford to live.

• 21:14Speaker 08

  I bet.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  So this is the fear, bottom, basically, that we, that if things, if trends for fertility keep going the way they're going, other countries worldwide, we're all gonna end up in this boat.

• 21:25Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Where, like, things kind of start to crumble.

• 21:28Speaker 08

  Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, because society is people. So without people, you don't have society.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it's true. You know, it's very, it's so simple when you put it that way, Rose. Society is people. And so this argument. And also, I mean, frankly, like, the way we've had society now is like, society is all different ages of people doing all kinds of stuff, you know, not just because we're like, you know, we love the sound of children's laughter, but also because we've built a society that requires all these different parts of it to sort of function and to like, also like, feel good, you know? So it's, yeah, so like, the concerns are very real, which means the obvious question is, what can we do about it? Yeah. And that's what we're gonna talk about after the break.

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• 25:00Speaker 11

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• 25:33Speaker 00

  Welcome back. It's Blythe. I'm here with Rose Rimler. Hey, Rose. Hey, Blythe. Today, we are talking about the idea that we are in a fertility crisis in the US, globally, because birth rates are going down all over the world. And the question is, what can you do? Well, I am not volunteering to get impregnated by Elon Musk, so don't even suggest that.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  You're not signing up for the, like... The Musk Express. The Tesla sperm delivery service?

• 26:02Speaker 00

  No. A cybertruck shows up in front of your apartment with a refrigerated sample?

• 26:08Speaker 00

  No, that's not what you want? Please offer other solutions that could potentially work. OK, so where I want to start here, Rose, actually, is with this study that I got extremely obsessed with. Because it involves a kind of surprising tactic to get people on the baby-making train. Free tequila? What is it? What is it? No, Rose, I'm taking you to church. Oh. And one of the researchers who was involved in this study, her name is Dr. Neha Deopa.

• 26:41Speaker 12

  I'm an assistant professor at the University of Exeter in the economics department.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  So what she studied, it all goes down in Georgia, in Eastern Europe, back in the mid-2000s, mid to late 2000s. And where we start is that Georgia has this fertility rate that maybe doesn't sound that bad by today's standards, but it is below replacement. It's about 1.76. OK. Yeah, which is kind of similar to where the US is right now, right? Mm-hmm. A little higher. Here's Neha.

• 27:08Speaker 12

  So Georgia is, let's say, post-Soviet, one of the post-Soviet countries, and it has a very typical trait of the other post-Soviet countries, which is extremely low fertility rates. There was a concern, both by the government and the church, that the demographic landscape of Georgia looks like is going through a fertility crisis.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  And another thing going on in Georgia is that it has this very powerful national church, this church I'm talking about, called the Georgian Orthodox Church. And as like a cultural institution, it's really strong. More than 80% of Georgians belong to it. And it also just like has, it's very strongly tied to the national identity. So people are like into this church.

• 27:55Speaker 12

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  And this church is led by a very powerful dude called Patriarch Ilya II. He's not like, he's not quite Pope level, but he's like a big deal in this church.

• 28:08Speaker 12

  So he is a very popular guy. And his opinion, like, he was rated the most trusted man in the country.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  The most trusted man in the country.

• 28:20Speaker 12

  With a rating of 94%.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Would you compare him to like, is he like Elvis?

• 28:26Speaker 12

  I can't think of anyone who at some point had such high approval ratings.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  It's so unprecedented how much this guy is beloved.

• 28:33Speaker 12

  Exactly.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  So Patriarch Ilya II, he sees this fertility thing in Georgia. He thinks these fertility rates are too low and decides he's gonna do something about it. So in December 2007, Ilya II announces this new plan, saying-

• 28:46Speaker 12

  He would personally baptize any third or higher born child within marriage to Georgian Orthodox women.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Okay, so, so kid number one, kid number two, you're out of luck. Kid number three, you're blessed by the patriarch of the church.

• 29:03Speaker 12

  Yeah, when he made this announcement, so he said that not only will he personally baptize, but he also said he would become their godfather.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Then he's the godfather of that kid forever, I guess, right?

• 29:15Speaker 12

  Yes, exactly. I, I, I'm sure for someone who's just, who is not religious or just from, from an outside perspective, might seem like, oh, it's just gonna be a godfather in the name of it, of course.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're doing air quotes, godfather, yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 12

  Exactly, so he's not gonna be visiting you on every birthday of your child. But it is, it's a matter of honor and respect for a family to have that.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  So that's the intervention. That's what he decides to do. He's like, okay, we're not having enough kids. I'm gonna baptize kids three plus. Yeah. So it's an incentive to have more than two children.

• 29:49Speaker 12

  Exactly.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  So did this actually convince people to have more children? That's what Neha's team wanted to find out. So several years later, they did this huge analysis to see what happened.

• 29:58Speaker 12

  So what we find is that people want to start having kids so they can make use of this program.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  How many kids is Ilya II responsible for?

• 30:09Speaker 12

  Forty thousand kids is how many he's been, has master baptized, yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 08

  Wow, okay.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Right? And according to Neha's team's analysis, these were like mostly additional births. Like they weren't like-

• 30:25Speaker 08

  They wouldn't have happened.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Right, would not have happened for the most part without this intervention, which is wild. And so to look at that in terms of the fertility rate, this total fertility rate we're talking about. So in Georgia, remember, we said it was 1.76 to begin with?

• 30:39Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 12

  And then within a space of 24 months, we actually see it rise to 2.3. So that's quite a big jump.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  So 1.7 to 2.3 in two years. I mean, it really feels like people like went home from church that day and started making babies.

• 30:57Speaker 12

  That is what we do observe. We see within nine months of this announcement, there is a jump, a spike in fertility.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Nine months?

• 31:05Speaker 12

  Exactly, yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, it's really, that's really something. If I were Ilya II, I'd pat myself on the back.

• 31:15Speaker 08

  Okay, but like, who would be the equivalent of Ilya II in the United States? If we wanted, like, this is not a repeatable intervention, or is it?

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Right, I mean, listen, funny you should ask. Okay, so who is the best person to do this job in the US if somebody was gonna do it? I'm like, now I'm like, okay, Tom Hanks. Everybody loves that guy. So if Tom Hanks was gonna baptize your kid, maybe, or Beyonce?

• 31:42Speaker 12

  Or Taylor Swift?

• 31:44Speaker 00

  What do you think, Rose?

• 31:45Speaker 08

  None of those people have the time.

• 31:49Speaker 08

  No, when you said Tom Hanks, I was like, hmm, that could convince me.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  That could convince you to have a kid? You'd be like, I'd have three kids if Tom Hanks-

• 31:56Speaker 08

  Yeah, if he came over and circumcised them. Well, I'm Jewish.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Oh, right, so Tom Hanks has to do the circumcision. If he's up for that, let's make a deal.

• 32:05Speaker 08

  If Tom Hanks will be the moil to my third and above children. No, I don't know, that's, it's such a good question. It's a good question, and it's a little, there's almost something sad about it because we're so divided as a country. And we have all these like microcultures within the country. It's a little bit sad that I can't think of any one uniting beloved person.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  I got it, Rose.

• 32:29Speaker 08

  Yeah? Dolly Parton. Oh, yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Dolly Parton gives you a wand? She comes in like Linda the Good Witch and waves her wand over your child. All right, well, should we start our letter writing campaign to Dolly Parton? Is that what you're saying? I'm convinced. That's all I need. Okay, so but to go back to what happened in Georgia. I mean, like, that's one potential downside to this influencer thing, right? Not really replicable. You don't all, you can't guarantee it's gonna work, right? And then another caveat is that their big, their big huge baby bump, it did not last forever. Hmm, okay. Yeah, so it's since like bumped back down. I mean, that could be because Ilya II is in his 90s now. He's like not doing as many of these baptisms. Overall, though, like, here's where I landed with Neha. Bottom line, don't put all your eggs in the influencer basket.

• 33:20Speaker 12

  Exactly, exactly.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  You know, instead Neha had a different suggestion.

• 33:25Speaker 12

  So what is easier, but rather maybe a more painful, is to just address women's need of how to make their motherhood easier. Uh, yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, nobody wants to do that.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it seems like a more direct approach. Slightly more straightforward, you say? Yeah, I mean, and of course, like, this is what a lot of people say we should be doing in the US. And, you know, and the Trump administration is supposedly considering some of these ideas. So there are a few things, policy-wise, that might move the needle here. Uh, one of them is making childcare more available and also cheaper.

• 34:07Speaker 12

  Duh.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Okay, yes. And there's this big review that came out recently. And one study that was in this review came out of Belgium. And it found that if you increase childcare slots for young kids by just one percentage point, the odds of somebody having their first baby goes up more than 10%. Mm-hmm. So it bumps it. Another big thing, and seems to be giving people parental leave, yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 12

  Duh.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Rose tells me duh portion of the episode. In Austria, they increased parental leave from one year to two years and saw that it led to about 12 additional kids per 100 women.

• 34:45Speaker 08

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, so it's not nothing. But I do have to kind of caveat some of these a bit, Rose, because although these things can make a difference, I think we have pretty good evidence that they do and they can be good for people who want to have kids. We don't have evidence that they're massively swinging the pendulum, right? Even in both these countries I just mentioned, Belgium and Austria, it's not like their total fertility rates are now above this 2.1 level, right? Even with these policies, it's not like it's a total massive reversal of all these trends we've been seeing for years.

• 35:21Speaker 08

  Okay, but I mean, is it possible it will? It's slow, but it'll get there? Is it changing things in the right direction at least to get into that number?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  It's so hard to tell. It's like, if you look at the numbers, it's like they sort of bounce up a little bit sometimes and then go back down. It's just, I don't think we have great evidence that anyone has reversed the decline in the long term.

• 35:46Speaker 08

  With these policies.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Right. I do not think we have great evidence for that.

• 35:49Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  All right, so I want to talk about a couple more big ideas here that come up in terms of policy, like this thing where you basically give people money when they have a kid.

• 36:00Speaker 08

  And that's an interesting one.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Right. Cold hard cash, like a one-time payment. Trump administration proposal is like $5,000. And it looks like this kind of like cash for kids. I know. Do you like it when I call it that? You're making this.

• 36:14Speaker 08

  Well, when you say it like that.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Sounds creepy.

• 36:17Speaker 08

  Somehow gets seedy.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  But overall, so there is a bit of evidence that these payments might get some people to have kids earlier than they would have otherwise.

• 36:27Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  But that can be good, you know, to sort of have, if you want people to have more time to have more kids. But generally, the best evidence we have is that it probably doesn't make that much of a difference to the overall fertility rate over the long term.

• 36:39Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Another thing that's come up a bunch is giving people better access to things like IVF. So Trump did make some noise about this at the start of his term, but seems to have backed off, actually. And what is kind of interesting here is that making it easier to get IVF, like, it seems like it can increase fertility for older women, which you might expect.

• 36:59Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  But it doesn't seem to bump up fertility rates overall.

• 37:05Speaker 08

  Right, right.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  And you know, there's a couple of other things that have been suggested to the Trump administration, like educating people on their menstrual cycles.

• 37:12Speaker 08

  That's a wild one, because it suggests that the reason women aren't getting pregnant is because they just don't know how to get pregnant.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  It goes in my ear, or it goes in my armpit? You know, you laugh.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  And I laughed. But it's actually, it is true that people trying to have kids, like, don't always know their fertile periods, right? So, does that mean you need a class from Donald Trump on your administration? I don't know, man. But, you know, I guess the premise is not totally flawed.

• 37:41Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  But, um, the thing about giving people a medal, you know? I don't know if that's-

• 37:48Speaker 08

  I don't know, you could argue that's part of, like, the, um, the-

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Influencer?

• 37:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, maybe that would have some, but I'm sure no one has tested that.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Well, interestingly, um, there's been some other famous people who have famously done this, such as Adolf Hitler.

• 38:03Speaker 08

  Oh, my god.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Stalin, as well. Also, medals offered, uh, no clear evidence. I actually looked, no clear evidence that it worked. I mean, there was some, like, post-war baby boo, you know, like, there's other stuff happening. So, so I would say that I don't think there's great medal evidence. And again, maybe on the margins, you have some people who are like, oh, I want a Trump medal in my house, so I'm gonna have, I'm gonna go from four to five.

• 38:28Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  And, you know, while we are on the subject of Hitler-

• 38:33Speaker 08

  Uh-huh. Where are you going?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I just have to say that historically, this idea of prenatalism, having more babies for your country, whatever gets tied up in that, you know, is also very tied up with white supremacy.

• 38:48Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  There have been papers written about this, right? Sometimes Christian nationalism.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  And people who, a lot of people who study this do worry about the part of this movement that, like, wants to keep women at home, out of the workforce, you know, or, like, come up with policies that end up being coercive, like Handmaid's Tale-y stuff, you know? And or like really limiting contraception, really limiting abortion. So like that is just all wrapped up in this.

• 39:13Speaker 08

  Right. That and there's this idea that it's not just babies generally. It's a specific kind of baby that some people want, like

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:23Speaker 08

  American babies, but by that they mean white, American babies.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And there is like a lot of that going on in in this whole conversation. Right. And, you know, and that is tied to another thing that I want to mention here, actually. Because interestingly, if you are worried about your population going down, you know, worried about lack of babies, worried about having not enough workers, there's one thing that you could do, which is let more people in.

• 39:51Speaker 08

  Of course.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  Have more immigration.

• 39:53Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  And there's actually some evidence that, you know, historically, immigration is one of the things that has like buoyed the US. That has sort of kept its fertility rates a little higher. That's kept its population more stable and growing. And actually, so the Congressional Budget Office calculates that if immigration goes away, like if immigration stops in the US, right? That the US population would start to shrink, like actually get smaller in 2033, like just eight years from now.

• 40:20Speaker 08

  Oh, wow.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, I mean, the fact that the administration is like deporting so many people, starting to really limit immigration could end up making this problem worse.

• 40:31Speaker 08

  Yeah, that makes sense. Although, having said that, it's not necessarily a solution forever. Because if the world fertility rate is generally going down, then you can't just rely on other countries.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Right, right. It's exactly, no, that is totally true. Like, it's not going to fix the global problem if your global population is going down eventually.

• 40:51Speaker 08

  Okay, so Blad, at this point, you've done all this research. You've really looked into this. What do you think the US should do?

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so here's where I land. I do not see a silver bullet here that will fix this, right? I don't think we've got evidence for that. But I think it would be smart to do these policies that could move the needle, that help people have kids if they want them.

• 41:11Speaker 08

  Mm hmm.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  This stuff we're talking about, like affordable childcare, parental leave. And plus, I just think those things are good to do for parents if you want people to want to be parents.

• 41:21Speaker 08

  So even though we don't have evidence that will totally turn things around and fix the problem, we have some evidence that it could help. And who knows how far it'll go if we really threw a lot of, put a lot of weight into those policies.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. That's where I am right now.

• 41:34Speaker 08

  So given that, how freaked out are you, right, about this?

• 41:40Speaker 00

  So I think the US fertility rate is pretty far from being at a crisis level. I actually, I talked to a bunch of nerds about this, demographers, economists, who told me that, like, okay, if your fertility rate is below 1, that is concerning. Like, that is low. And you're gonna start to see some of these effects we talked about. But most of them were actually, like, not panicking about rates that were, like, 1.5 or more, which is where we are. They were like, if you can keep that, if you can keep that kind of stable, if you can make it sort of stable, you can adjust other stuff. Like, you can do things to make it so that your, your healthcare, your other services, like, don't fall off a cliff, right? Like, you can plan for it.

• 42:20Speaker 08

  You have a smaller society, but it's stable.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Right. And nobody that I talked to thought that humanity was in danger of going extinct anytime soon. That brought it off my list of things that keep, that keep me up at night. So I think you safely can. There's actually another thing that makes this not feel like a crisis to me. And that is that, by and large, lots of people still do want kids. And actually, there was this, a lot of scientists pointed me to this big UN report that said that, on average, people want more kids than they are currently having. Like, they were like, the real crisis is, actually, people can't have the kids they want. And I was like, well, then this is not a crisis of desire. So to me, weirdly, it kind of leaves me a little more optimistic, actually. At least that we're not headed toward, like,

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Children of Men, if you remember that famous movie, right? Where it's like, no children anywhere.

• 43:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, I guess it's better than that.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  The bar, that's where the bar is.

• 43:15Speaker 08

  That's a pretty low bar, but okay.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  But right, but I am a little bit like, okay, well, if people want to have kids, I am a little bit like, if we can help them figure out how to make that happen, that does make me feel better.

• 43:25Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  All right, what about you? Where does it leave you?

• 43:27Speaker 08

  I'm worried. I'm more worried than I was.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 43:30Speaker 08

  I would say, yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 43:32Speaker 08

  You sufficiently freaked me out. Good job, Blythe.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Oh, really? Oh, no. Why are you freaked out?

• 43:36Speaker 08

  It just, the things that you say will help or are likely to help are not things that I see the world's governments doing right now.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Well, ours isn't.

• 43:47Speaker 08

  True.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, I think other countries, maybe there's a little bit more movement, right?

• 43:52Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  So you, however, are just gonna have to wait for your period class and your medal.

• 43:57Speaker 08

  Okay. I'll get started on that right away.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  Okay, thanks for joining me for this, Rose.

• 44:06Speaker 08

  Uh, thanks, Blythe.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  That's Science Versus.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  This week's episode has more than 100 citations. If you want to check those out, you can find them in our transcript, which is linked in our show notes. Now, I want to give a quick shout out to another fun science show. It's called Sing for Science, and this is an interview show that pairs musicians and scientists in conversation. Every episode focuses on a song by the artist and how it connects to that scientist's area of expertise. Their latest ep features one of my favorites, country star Kacey Musgraves, talking with my college's Paul Stamets about psilocybin-containing mushrooms. So check it out. That's Sing for Science.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  This episode was produced by me, Blythe Terrell, with help from Rose Rimler, Merrill Horn, Michelle Dang, and Aketi Foster-Keez. We're edited by me, and our executive producer is Wendy Zukerman. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord, fact checking by Diane Kelly, and research help from Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, So Wiley, Emma Munger, and Bumi Hadaka. A very special thanks to all the researchers who spoke to me for this episode. Thank you, thank you, including Professor Ronwy Kaldegerhart, Dr. Jana Burgswich, Professor Amy Choi, Dr. Gretchen Dunauer, Dr. Emily Clancher-Murchant, and Professor Landon Schnabel. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  We'll fact you soon.

• 45:47Speaker 13

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