Based Camp - Comparative Fertility Rates with KaiserBauch

00:00:00.000 hello we are excited to be here with kaiser bach i i know kaiser bell okay so if you guys haven't

00:00:07.580 seen his channel it is a fantastic channel if you're interested if you guys ever watch our

00:00:13.240 channel and your response is i hate how political they've gotten i wish they just focused on

00:00:18.500 fertility rates and the really deep dive on individual countries looking at the entire

00:00:24.740 history of their fertility rate his is the channel to go to that is that is the channel that you are

00:00:29.980 thinking of that ours is not because i don't have the time to do that research and someone else is

00:00:34.760 already doing it so what i wanted to focus on was this episode is having done all of these incredible

00:00:42.640 deep dives on geographies around the world and the fertility rates that they're seeing both the rises

00:00:49.460 and drops over time i want to get a synthesis of your ideas or patterns you've recognized that could

00:00:57.780 be useful to either resolving this issue predicting when it's going to happen etc so go go ahead get

00:01:04.760 us started here well first of all thank you very much for this kind introduction i'm very glad to be

00:01:10.920 here thank you for having me and i mean this is kind of a complicated complicated question to be honest

00:01:18.100 because one of the things that i really try to focus on in my videos is the differences between

00:01:24.680 different countries or let's say civilizations or regions and trying to figure out why two different

00:01:31.960 countries in modern period have like vastly different level of fertility rates because people

00:01:38.680 people often talk about low fertility rates as if they were like a singular phenomenon but there is a very

00:01:45.280 wide range of low fertility rates like completely one thing is like south korea or east asia where you have

00:01:52.840 really like fertility rates under one child per woman and completely other thing is like the anglosphere

00:01:58.440 where even though the fertility rates are below the placement they generally tend to be more close

00:02:05.240 to like two children per woman or at least in the in the 1.5 to two children per woman range and this

00:02:12.200 makes the situation let's say much more stable and easily handleable in the long run so what really

00:02:19.960 interests me is to like dig deep and try to find out why are there these differences because it seems

00:02:26.280 to me there are these like big broad macro factors that influence basically the whole world and that

00:02:32.840 depress the fertility rates everywhere which is like all the well-known stuff like the decrease in infant

00:02:39.400 mortality rates then you know urbanization female education lack of religiosity urbanization all of this

00:02:47.160 but then there are these like very country or let's say region specific uh details which make for

00:02:54.360 example you know south korea have fertility rates that is almost one child lower than that for example

00:03:01.240 in the united states so it's it's it's very hard to find some like unifying unifying traits that would

00:03:09.080 be applicable to all of the countries i think a good place to start

00:03:12.680 is unifying traits that people don't think about so here's an example why is it latin america's

00:03:20.280 fertility rate in your estimation crashing so quickly well i mean what is happening in latin america

00:03:27.960 but what is happening more broadly all over the world in this past like let's say five or six years or

00:03:34.440 maybe since the coveted pandemic really i would say is that like we are now seeing fertility rates

00:03:41.240 really crash to very low levels in many countries all over the world a lot of them are in south america

00:03:48.360 like chile for example it is possible that chile will have a fertility rate lower than one child per

00:03:53.960 woman this year maybe or wow 2024 so last year actually but there are also other countries around the

00:04:01.720 globe that are seeing this like massive fertility crash that is very fast it is happening in

00:04:06.760 remarkably short period of time like what other countries uh well i think uh thailand is now having

00:04:13.720 very low fertility rate and but but also there we can observe that a lot of the countries i previously

00:04:20.920 talked about for example like uk or canada or even the united states that had like fertility rates that

00:04:27.400 were relatively close to two children per women are now going even deeper also a lot of countries in

00:04:36.120 eastern europe are seeing their fertility rates crash very close to like one child per woman for example

00:04:41.080 countries in the countries in the baltic estonia latvia they had fertility rates that were relatively

00:04:48.440 reasonable five or six seven years ago and now they all crash down close to one child per woman

00:04:53.800 and i think that probably the most logical explanation to me is that new generation of young people is

00:05:03.880 growing up and they are they are comprising a larger and larger proportion of childbearing cohorts in

00:05:10.440 these countries and i think these younger generations are like really negatively influenced by the

00:05:17.480 digitalization of their lives i was going to say i think one thing that people are underestimating

00:05:22.680 especially for this post-covid generation when they're like how is this happening all over the

00:05:26.920 world at once is how unified the culture that the internet generation consumes is while there might be

00:05:36.360 regional colors the movies that a young person in estonia is watching these days is going to be the

00:05:44.360 same movies that a young person in the us is watching was maybe a 20 difference same with rural guatemala

00:05:52.040 same was pretty much anywhere in the world and i think that we have overestimated how much cultural

00:05:58.120 uniqueness there still is in the world i completely agree with you on this and tell me more maybe

00:06:05.800 maybe more so than the movies even it's things like tinder or like the way young people are now getting

00:06:12.520 or not getting into relationships to be more precise yeah it's really spread all over the world and i think

00:06:18.200 like just the general lack of social relations or the digitalization of social relations

00:06:25.480 is in my opinion probably the most influential part of the equation when we are talking about this

00:06:31.240 specific period of the last like maybe decade or six five six seven years in which we've seen this

00:06:37.400 really like big fertility declines i would say it's probably the biggest part of of this what do you

00:06:43.640 think about this theory around cell phones we covered it recently uh i was really surprised it

00:06:47.800 sort of came out of nowhere for me and the theory goes like this that cell phones are basically

00:06:52.360 everywhere now and cell phones are more fun than having sex or kids or socializing with people

00:07:00.440 and the way the theory was presented that i heard it is you know when i was a kid

00:07:04.120 you had like snake on your cell phone like very simple game oh yeah yeah and so like if a friend says

00:07:10.200 like come over to my place you know there was nothing better to do really you could watch what

00:07:14.840 was on tv like pre-scheduled programming or play snake on your cell phone right but now you can watch and

00:07:21.480 engage in literally any environment or game you want to or any sort of social interaction you want to

00:07:27.400 so why have in-person interactions anymore do you do you buy into the theory oh well of course this is

00:07:34.120 just over stimulation i would say it is like i mean young guy growing up today the amount of content

00:07:41.320 or the amount of fun or the amount of games or pornography whatever is so vast it's basically

00:07:46.680 never ending it's infinite so you can basically spend your whole like a couple of years growing up

00:07:52.520 in your room and you are you are able to like experience things that would be unthinkable like two

00:07:59.000 decades ago it's true on the other hand i don't know if i could say it's more fun it it probably

00:08:05.560 is in some like superficial manner but it's not fulfilling like people are not happy with this

00:08:11.320 reality they are not so i would say yeah this is like basically some form maybe like a dopamine

00:08:17.320 addiction or overstimulation but i don't think it is like leading to people so you don't you don't

00:08:23.480 think it's a marketplace issue you think it's an oversaturation issue well yeah so i'll describe

00:08:30.520 the different scenarios because i actually think it's a marketplace issue more than an oversaturation

00:08:34.440 issue the marketplace issue is saying if i am deciding between two activities i now have there's

00:08:40.520 this whole new category of activities i might choose over wanting to be a parent or going on a date or

00:08:47.000 having sex and the thing that really gets me about this theory and i think that you you highlighted

00:08:51.960 this for me when you were just talking is that people have been like oh people aren't having kids

00:08:57.800 because of like porn but it's like i know more guys who turned down sex or a date because of a good

00:09:04.360 video game than because of porn well yeah yeah that might be the case sure i mean i would i would say

00:09:14.360 the analogy i was thinking about in this regard sometimes ago was that you know the digital technology

00:09:20.200 internet all of its smartphones it's it's all connected and it was sort of like it was just

00:09:25.880 the the younger generation was thrown into it without any like form of meaningful supervision because

00:09:33.160 basically when i was growing up my parents were not really able to control what i do online because

00:09:38.920 they just didn't have the skill like my father was really lucky when he was able to put an attachment to

00:09:45.000 an email so he wasn't like able to control what i'm doing online and i think this is maybe similar

00:09:51.000 to like when there was an industrial revolution and like one generation of kids was just getting

00:09:57.160 a really bad like health impacts from all the all the chimneys and all the factories and then people

00:10:02.600 said like okay this is not really good we have to somehow make this work differently so the negative

00:10:08.200 impacts are not so big and then it was sort of regulated and i think we might be in the process where

00:10:14.120 the younger generation was sort of thrown into this and we it just needs to somehow you know figure out

00:10:20.600 how to live in this completely changed technological environment and i i mean in this regard i'm pretty

00:10:27.720 much on board with stuff that like maybe jonathan heights said about this if you are familiar with him

00:10:33.160 that like i i really think the like the approach towards kids and their their like approach technologies

00:10:41.160 should be somehow regulated i don't know if you agree but like i would say i would say it shouldn't be

00:10:48.600 like completely completely unregulated how it is now i think it's it's very hard to do yeah i think

00:10:55.320 yeah yeah anything i mean the problem with kids is they're better with technology than we are yeah and

00:11:01.000 one of the the jokes in the us is a i don't know if you know this but someone i didn't know this until

00:11:05.320 recently about 50 of the states in the us like effectively have a porn ban really yeah like

00:11:10.600 requiring like an id if you're accessing porn hub and stuff like that oh yeah like that but but as

00:11:16.680 people point out it's really only a ban for people too old to know how to use a vpn um and and that's the

00:11:23.640 thing about any sort of technology ban is it is inversely effective against the population that needs it the

00:11:29.880 most oh i completely agree and when i talk about regulation i do not necessarily mean like

00:11:35.640 administrative or legal regulation i mean mostly like within families i would say like so maybe i

00:11:42.520 didn't like say right i i think like parents really need to try to to try to somehow regulate what their

00:11:49.240 kids are doing out there even if it's not easy but i would actually say that the difference between

00:11:54.680 what between the approach to technology of different generations is now a bit smaller so i

00:11:59.640 use the example with my father so i'm i'm basically in my late late 20s and when i was growing up like

00:12:06.280 maybe in 2005 2007 2010 like the the gap between my digital skills and my let's say parents digital

00:12:14.840 skills was really really big i would say now i'm also a parent now i have a i have a kid unless there is

00:12:23.400 some like really which is possible really really new massive like jump in the technological innovation

00:12:30.600 i would say that the gap will be smaller for the parents today with their kids interesting okay so

00:12:37.720 i want to ask you about some specific countries here what are your thoughts on the north korean

00:12:41.640 dropping fertility rate you think that's just due to like like like scarcity of food or something else

00:12:47.000 oh to be completely honest i do we even know the data is like correct because i'm gonna i'm gonna

00:12:54.840 be honest with you i haven't really looked deep into north korea because my approach was like i don't

00:13:01.720 really know what is going on in that country in great detail i i do not have the information i i'm not

00:13:08.200 not really sure because you know do you know okay maybe you have what are your what are your thoughts

00:13:13.720 on israel then well i mean israel is my favorite like is israel i'm gonna get some heat for this

00:13:22.120 comment but like for a person that is demographic buff like israel is incredibly interesting because

00:13:28.760 they are able to walk the fine line between like group cohesion enough to have like big families and

00:13:36.040 strong cultural norms and enough individualism individualism to have like you know modern prosperous

00:13:42.680 innovative economy and i would say that with israel it is like all about the common purpose of the

00:13:49.240 people they just know why they should have kids they do not need to be persuaded you know you need to

00:13:55.960 have kids because it's good it's you know it gives you stability it is what gives life its meaning people are

00:14:01.960 like okay that is all sort of like individual these values but i would say in israel they have really

00:14:08.120 strong feeling of like okay we have our country we have fought to have it really hard we are still

00:14:14.600 fighting to have it and we do not want to lose it and we cannot afford to start to massively aging and

00:14:20.440 dying out because we are actually standing against like this huge numerical mass around us that is

00:14:27.400 demographically much stronger than we are so i would say that in israel it is really about this

00:14:32.840 like common sense of purpose of national purpose i've also the last time we spoke when we accidentally

00:14:40.440 forgot to record our conversation you were had just finished making your kazakhstan video and it

00:14:44.840 hadn't gone live yet and it's really interesting for a couple of reasons because they are like this

00:14:50.680 i mean okay their fertility is not amazing but they're doing pretty well and especially the number of

00:14:55.720 people in kazakhstan who are having a lot of kids yes like four plus kids is notable i mean it's it's a

00:15:02.680 much bigger proportion of the population than in other areas and you pointed out that there's more of a

00:15:08.760 cultural norm around having a lot of kids and there's also more of a cultural norm of still living with

00:15:15.960 your parents and having kids and being married while in your 20s and while going to university so here's

00:15:22.040 an example of a place where people are having kids while also getting higher levels of educational

00:15:28.840 attainment while experiencing an increase in national wealth um while also not being incredibly

00:15:36.040 like religiously conservative similar to israel right like israel has a lot of religion but it's not

00:15:41.720 crazy about it like it's and it's not an aria babu wrote a great sub stack piece drawing a correlation

00:15:47.880 between countries that were sort of overall very religiously conservative and those which weren't

00:15:53.640 but had very religiously conservative pockets and found that basically if you lived in a country that

00:15:57.720 was uniformly very religiously conservative birth rates on average were lower perhaps because there's

00:16:05.080 this feeling like it's imposed on you or like you don't have a choice or like the standards are so high

00:16:11.080 how could you possibly keep up with it whereas maybe when there isn't this this sort of oppressive

00:16:17.160 religious overtone in a country there's more enthusiasm about having kids i don't know like

00:16:21.240 we haven't gotten to the bottom of that but it seemed to be something that showed up also in kazakhstan

00:16:26.120 where yes 10 of the population would support the idea of sharia law but that's quite low compared to

00:16:32.520 countries where sharia law is actually um so i think that that that's a really interesting example and i'm

00:16:39.720 much more interested in not like what what do we take away or like creating it there

00:16:46.520 sorry once again please what's creating the high fertility rate or the resistance to fertility

00:16:50.840 collapse was in kazakhstan well so the kazakhstan case is pretty interesting because usually when i do

00:16:56.680 these deep diets and i'm trying to find out why some country has like notably lower or notably higher

00:17:02.680 fertility than others i usually uh manage to like figure out this like one specific thing that

00:17:09.720 i don't think is the reason but with uh as for example with israel as we were talking about

00:17:15.560 before but with kazakhstan to be honest i haven't really found like some magical ingredients that would

00:17:21.400 explain it my takeaway was that it just works there i'm not sure what specifically is behind it but

00:17:29.960 as as simon said the country is religious but it is not overtly religious it is a muslim country

00:17:35.480 predominantly but there is also uh ethnically russian minority which is uh which is orthodox and

00:17:41.160 there are no big like problems there uh relatively few people support things support things like uh

00:17:47.080 like sharia law uh people the population is very much very much educated so there is for example very

00:17:54.040 very low proportion of women that would be illiterate basically close to zero that is maybe like an

00:18:00.200 inheritance from the soviet times because like the soviet system however bad it was it was

00:18:05.320 pretty keen on education so the countries also have relatively high urbanization rate not too much

00:18:12.200 but relatively high the gdp per capita it's not like israel it's poor country but it is not like

00:18:18.520 impoverished in any way there are richer richer countries that have much lower fertility so it just

00:18:25.720 works you know i was talking to some people from kazakhstan and one of them told me that due to the

00:18:32.200 sort of like tragic history of kazakhstan in the 20th century there was a big famine in the 1930s

00:18:37.720 where a lot of kazakh people died and the population of kazakhs actually decreased quite a bit and he

00:18:43.880 told me that there is a bit of like pro natalist sentiment connected to this that they want to like

00:18:49.000 replenish the population which came close to uh being like drastically reduced we oh that's interesting

00:18:55.320 similar similar to israel yeah yeah it's similar to other studies that have shown that like on the

00:19:02.120 same island that has been hit by a tsunami small sub-regions that had more casualties actually had

00:19:09.160 higher fertilities after that than those that had lower casualties like there's there's a reaction to

00:19:13.560 tragedy yeah but i don't think that that's what this is simon this is a totally no no well but what i think

00:19:18.200 well like i don't know listening listening again to that youtube video which is just so good and again

00:19:22.760 everyone's got to check out the youtube channel there's such good deep dives on the full history

00:19:27.640 the cultural the economic the political incentives and disincentives toward fertility was just that

00:19:32.600 like it's kind of a societal default that's societally supported on all ends and it's specifically the way

00:19:37.720 that families form and function provides a default path in life where of course you're going to have

00:19:43.880 kids at that stage like of course in your 20s while you're living with your parents and going to

00:19:47.720 university like it makes sense to start your family and that's what makes the biggest difference i think

00:19:52.600 that the big the big driver behind these sudden drops in fertility is fewer mistake babies had by

00:19:58.520 teens which is good like we don't want a lot of unprepared people who don't want children to be

00:20:03.320 having children so like i'm not necessarily against those drops what we're seeing on the flip side with

00:20:07.640 with these declines is people delaying and delaying and delaying having kids because they they believe

00:20:13.800 and also totally different phenomenon simone so you're you're connecting now a totally new phenomenon a

00:20:18.440 third unrelated so the phenomenon you're talking about is different from the phenomenon of tragedy

00:20:24.360 leading to increase fertility rate like we like i'm talking about a separate one i'm talking this is

00:20:29.320 independent of the tragedy thing and then there's the separate phenomenon which is at place within

00:20:33.720 kazakhstan and israel which is a cultural identity of anxiety around disappearing or being erased by enemy

00:20:42.600 factions which does seem to be able to persistently increase fertility within a region and is something

00:20:48.120 i would actually encourage most families to adopt this idea that your family is different or your small

00:20:55.080 cultural group is different i think by the way is also improved by diversity so if you combine there's

00:21:00.840 like a bunch of tiny factors here that i think yeah i agree with if you combine the fact that there was

00:21:05.320 tragedy in the past also that there's some there's more diversity relatively speaking in kazakhstan what

00:21:12.120 diversity is like if you're a kazakhstani you go out and you see the russian immigrants that were

00:21:16.280 brought to replace you every day yeah and their fertility rates are super low anyway we'll let kaiser talk

00:21:21.480 oh yeah well so i agree that the high fertility in kazakhstan is specific for the ethnic kazakhs

00:21:27.960 there are also other groups like tajiks and other like local central asian groups their fertility is also

00:21:33.080 high but the fertility of ethnic russians in kazakhstan is relatively low even though it is higher than in

00:21:39.240 russia which is just like a trivia but it it's it's still sub replacement firmly but yeah but then again

00:21:46.440 it is always a bit of alchemy because you can definitely find groups around the globe that underwent

00:21:52.200 genocide or like these comparable events and their fertility is not boosted by it so like i mean you can

00:21:59.960 maybe like you can argue maybe for example native americans no true terrible fertility rates yeah yeah

00:22:06.760 yeah so so it's always like and now at this point i'm not really able to come up with some other group

00:22:13.320 like that but i'm sure there are groups that underwent like big big genocide i'd be very interested

00:22:18.680 you know the difference between the native american fertility rates within latin american populations

00:22:23.880 like the mesoamerican people well do you mean between different countries no no no i mean like

00:22:30.200 so in in in the united states you know you've got native american populations but they're generally

00:22:34.920 pretty small in in latin america there's some really big native american populations like the

00:22:40.840 descendants of like the mayans and the in the aztecs and the inca and stuff like that i was i'm like in

00:22:45.880 my head i'm wondering did they have a differentiated fertility rate from the settler population of like

00:22:51.640 spanish types okay so i was not looking specifically into this phenomenon however i would be willing to

00:22:59.160 bet that a lot of these communities will have higher fertility than like the settler populations

00:23:05.400 but then again it is a quest i would say a lot of it would be probably explained by like socioeconomic

00:23:10.360 factors i would guess that these native americans in latin america will be much more rural will have much

00:23:16.600 less income or we'd be like on a lower scale of the socioeconomic development in comparison with

00:23:21.240 the settler population which will be probably more urban and let's say in the higher stratas of the

00:23:26.840 socioeconomic ladder so i would say here the the differences would be probably explainable by by

00:23:33.880 just socioeconomic factors well i mean but in the united states native americans are more rural and

00:23:40.920 more poor and they have a worse fertility rate than the white population well yeah that is true that is

00:23:46.360 true i mean i guess you always have to approach any group like on an individual basis i i would say

00:23:53.880 personally in north america they're among i like i'm no expert on native americans but i always get the

00:24:00.360 sense that they really like lost their world and they they are sort of like surviving in a world that is not

00:24:07.160 really theirs i don't know if it is but there is like it always seemed to be that way while in latin america

00:24:14.120 it seems to me that it just all merged into this new entity which is like equally native and european

00:24:23.160 and you know a bit of like african slavery and history in there but it is like i i was doing a video on

00:24:29.080 brazil and brazil is really like what what makes brazil for example very different from like north america

00:24:35.880 is that the population just mixed from the very beginning and it like brazil most brazilians are

00:24:41.720 just like this sort of like brown brownish population that is just that have parts of ancestry from all

00:24:48.200 the main free ancestry groups which is like uh native native populations to latin america european

00:24:54.840 mostly portuguese settlers and then slaves brought from africa so it's like it was just a very different

00:25:01.560 story demographically from the north america where the groups didn't really intermingle

00:25:05.640 demographically speaking what's fertility rate like when contrasted with other countries

00:25:10.600 once again sorry how is brazil's fertility rate doing oh bad it's not good brazil is one of the

00:25:16.680 countries that i could mention when you were asking in the beginning which underwent pretty pretty

00:25:21.800 massive fertility decline in the past like half a decade to decade yeah yeah so i want to get your

00:25:28.760 thoughts on my religion theory that i've had for this okay because you you'd likely be able to like

00:25:34.280 get a get a feel of this so i sort of have this theory that there is an overlay obviously there's all

00:25:40.120 the main things that affect fertility like urbanization wealth etc but then when you take all of those into

00:25:46.040 account my argument is that various religious overlays seem to have an additional effect of fertility

00:25:54.520 either up or down with the most negative ones being east asian religious systems specifically you know

00:26:02.600 like shinto buddhism daoism all of that that category of stuff but the ones that are more surprising to

00:26:09.720 people is where the judeo-christian ones fall the the ones that are the most protective of fertility rates

00:26:17.480 is judaism at the very top then under judaism protestant christianity then under protestant

00:26:24.120 christianity which often i think surprises people are the the muslim groups then under the muslim groups

00:26:30.600 are catholicism and eastern eastern orthodoxy which seem to have like unusually low fertility rates

00:26:38.440 yeah yeah so well what i found find very interesting about comparisons of different religions

00:26:44.600 is basically that broadly speaking abrahamic religions all of them like christianity islam and

00:26:49.960 judaism there exists within these religions there exists a correlation between religiosity and fertility

00:26:58.120 so highly highly religious people in abrahamic religions do have more children do have larger

00:27:04.920 families families in comparison to that for example people from buddhist countries or hindu hinduist

00:27:10.920 countries so like india this correlation is non-existent there it's just it isn't there so

00:27:16.840 being a highly devoted buddhist or highly devoted hindu is not connected to having larger family which

00:27:23.960 is interesting and when you think about like i'm not once again i'm not like expert on hinduism or

00:27:29.640 buddhism but what i was when i was researching it it seems like sort the idea of sort of escaping the

00:27:37.240 suffering of life to escaping the never-ending cycle of like reincarnations and all the stuff

00:27:43.080 connected to it is like the the highest goal of these religions yeah it's inherently antinatalist it's

00:27:49.000 about like species-wide destruction sort of there is an element that is like inherently antinatalist in

00:27:57.240 these religions i agree so this is what i find very interesting and like if you we would compare like

00:28:03.000 different abrahamic religions that yeah yeah i i mostly i mostly would agree with or like that is

00:28:09.160 probably supported by data what you what you stated about the different religious group and i would say

00:28:15.560 why catholicism is like lower than protestantism my take would probably be that catholicism is

00:28:22.280 like really universal while the protestantism is really good at like maintaining this like smaller more

00:28:28.680 narrow like sect based attitude where you have like a lot of yeah yeah yeah which i have like very

00:28:36.680 yeah i know i love this i hadn't thought about this before i'm gonna reframe this a little bit

00:28:42.280 most in the same way that jews are like we are jews we are different and we are better a lot of

00:28:48.440 protestant groups feel that way about themselves whereas a lot of catholic groups intrinsically are like

00:28:54.200 and we are going to convert you because there's no difference between us and you and you'll be catholics

00:28:58.440 one day eventually yeah yeah sure yeah i i agree with this but then again islam is also very

00:29:04.040 universalist it is similar maybe to catholicism in this way and there seems to be a higher fertility

00:29:09.800 on the other hand a lot of the muslim world is relatively socioeconomically backward i don't want

00:29:16.040 to like you know offend anyone but broadly check out our video why are muslims so poor yeah i will

00:29:21.320 i will we have we have a video on this yeah but broadly speaking it is true that muslim world is

00:29:28.040 is less wealthy and this obviously interplays with fertility and when you look at some countries that

00:29:34.200 managed to reach some like you know level of wealth level of development level of urbanization level of

00:29:39.480 education all these like classic points for example turkey iran some other countries the fertility is

00:29:45.800 is sub-replacement so i i do not think islam will be like inherently able to resist this

00:29:51.480 it was just later to arrive into like modernity defined by some of these traits like you know

00:29:56.600 urbanization education economic prosperity and so on

00:30:03.080 that makes sense okay what i'm really curious is i mean now that you've just done so many deep dives on

00:30:08.440 different regions and cultures if you could design like some let's say someone said here's a bunch of

00:30:15.240 territory you can turn this into a city state you can choose who is allowed to emigrate to your zone

00:30:21.960 and your job is to create a thriving but also like high fertility country like we need this to be at

00:30:28.920 least like the one bastion of humanity that grows in the future yeah other than israel how would you design

00:30:35.880 this city state what kind of culture would you try to perpetuate what economic policies would you

00:30:40.760 implement uh are there even like industries that you would promote or try to keep out of your city

00:30:46.600 state what where what would you do okay well that is really interesting question i have to admit i haven't

00:30:52.120 talked about this from this sort of like playing the god perspective how would i do it but i would say

00:30:59.240 what would be really important is to let people have autonomy in their life in their family lives in

00:31:05.320 their community lives because i would say what connects a lot of these high fertility groups

00:31:11.240 is that they have like a very considerable amount of autonomy within the societies they function in

00:31:17.640 and i think this is like really important so basically if you have groups that are intrinsically

00:31:23.000 programmed or like culturally predisposed to have higher fertility just let them do their thing

00:31:29.880 and do not mingle with like with their with their cultural beliefs and then like i mean what specific

00:31:37.880 sorts of people i would like invite to these hypothetical states i mean there are that would just be a matter

00:31:45.640 of maybe my cultural preference you know so like probably my cultural preference would be closer to

00:31:51.000 like some christian groups maybe some protestant christian groups than to for example

00:31:55.560 haredi jews or some you know highly religious muslims but i i don't think that is a matter of

00:32:01.800 like what is better for fertility that would be just a matter of maybe my culture preference which is

00:32:06.920 like defined by my you know where i'm from and stuff yeah we and you could always cheese the numbers just

00:32:13.000 by you know like inviting jews i do like the idea of like okay you're starting from scratch here

00:32:17.960 very interesting how would you would you go for like a millet system this is what i've promoted before

00:32:23.400 but do you know what i mean when i talk about a millet system oh i'm not sure now please okay so a

00:32:28.840 millet system was used in the in the ottoman empire and they basically had a different court system and

00:32:37.000 laws for every sub-religious community and the tax base was collected by the individual religious

00:32:42.360 communities and then distributed through them whoo well i mean

00:32:49.640 maybe maybe i'm

00:32:53.720 i'm like i think this is a very like complex issue and you know the millet system as far as i know had

00:33:01.240 like it definitely the ottoman empire is well known for the different like ethnic and religious groups

00:33:07.720 within it having quite a lot of autonomy and like a certain degree of self self-rule but then again

00:33:15.480 i mean it came to like it was then but it was not like able to stand up in the competition against

00:33:23.480 other big states or empires that were like months more centralized and have like more more you know

00:33:29.400 more unified bureaucracy and they were then more efficient and stuff but we are comparing like different

00:33:35.960 time periods and what was maybe functioning then in some regards would not be functioning now and

00:33:41.640 vice versa so like i i don't know to be honest i don't know well you know this is this is the i

00:33:47.080 think an interesting thing that we civilizationally don't talk about right now but the country that's

00:33:52.600 really bucking the trends here in the countries that we see bucking the trends you know if you look

00:33:57.720 at like kathachstan or you look at israel are countries where you have a a native population or a

00:34:05.080 population that sees themselves as native like the the kathachstan or israel and a bit of an ethno

00:34:12.040 state but an ethno state that allows for a large degree of diversity so in israel for example there is

00:34:19.960 an understanding that this is the jewish state for the jewish people but you know we have a huge chunk

00:34:26.360 of the population that's muslim and christian and everything like that and i wonder if this system for

00:34:33.480 running things could be the most effective well it might i mean it's definitely true and there are

00:34:39.720 there is also research to to support this from paul morland demographer that says that basically like

00:34:45.640 ethnic competition between ethnic groups can definitely lead to higher fertility it was the case

00:34:51.400 in israel and like in the between israel israelis and palestinian arabs there was this like sense of

00:35:00.120 ethnic competition they were trying to outbreed each other and there was a time i think i think

00:35:05.240 this was in the 1980s and maybe 1990s where like women in the gaza strip were having like eight or

00:35:11.720 nine children per woman which was even back then it was like out of sync with the standards in the

00:35:16.760 muslim world on the same level of socioeconomic development back then and the research proved that

00:35:21.640 it was like very much maintained also by the sense of ethnic rivalry between the groups another example

00:35:27.480 of this was northern ireland where basically the catholics in northern ireland they were a minority

00:35:33.640 and they are now basically it's 50 50 and they probably have like majority among the younger

00:35:38.760 generations and well it now it now stopped because the conflict fortunately is like it's not it's not

00:35:45.000 really like going on anymore but back then in like the 1970s 80s when there was really like a pretty

00:35:50.680 big ethnic conflict in the in northern ireland and all the bomb attacks and everything and ira there

00:35:56.360 was also a sense of like higher fertility among catholics in northern ireland and their mission was to

00:36:01.720 like outbreed the protestants so there are cases where this happens also another case was from sri lanka

00:36:08.840 where i don't remember exactly i'm not familiar with this one yeah yeah there was also a bit of like

00:36:15.640 ethnic competition going on in sri lanka between the two groups one was tamils and i don't remember

00:36:21.240 the other unfortunately sorry but yeah so this is documented that like ethnic conflict or or like

00:36:26.760 sense of ethnic danger can definitely lead to higher fertility but then again there are other cases where

00:36:34.280 it just doesn't happen so it's it's always a bit of alchemy like it is one of the ingredients but there

00:36:39.560 is always some something you like it's not universally applicable we need a race war is what you're

00:36:45.720 saying no race war i'll put on the south park scene here so okay so i was gonna ask you what are your

00:36:52.760 thoughts on the because one of the statistics that always shocked me was that like 50 of european

00:36:57.560 countries going into i think it was world war one uh were below repopulation rate what are your

00:37:02.440 thoughts on that previous sort of european fertility collapse before the baby boom okay so i don't think it

00:37:07.480 was world war one i think this is world war two i would say world war two okay yeah yeah yeah and

00:37:12.440 this was basically between the wars and i think a lot of it was connected to the great to the great

00:37:19.240 crisis the economy the great economic crisis of the 1930s so the fertility rate went under two children

00:37:25.960 per woman in the in the times of the great depression yeah that was the word i was looking for great

00:37:30.120 depression and then after world war war it went up again i mean i would say a lot of the countries in

00:37:36.680 western europe like countries that were really like the most developed countries in the world

00:37:40.440 back then germany uk france i would say there were more or less culturally ready for low fertility back

00:37:48.920 then and in the environment between the wars which was kind of like how to say like there was the great

00:37:55.560 depression which was big economic crisis there was sort of this sense of like you know weimar germany

00:38:00.600 it was sort of like decadent all values were questions a lot of like you know a lot of free

00:38:06.600 thinking people but it i would say it was not also a lot of like i don't know sorry i i just i got sort

00:38:15.240 of tangled up in this now but yeah it was it is true a lot of people do not notice that there was a

00:38:21.160 period of relatively low fertility under two children per woman even back then when a lot of people suppose

00:38:27.560 it was just like high fertility all the way up you know 1990s or 1980s and then it went wet went up

00:38:35.480 again after the world war ii in what is known as the baby boom where the generation of baby boomers were

00:38:40.200 born but yeah i would say a lot of it was probably a lot of it could be explained by the great depression

00:38:46.760 probably hmm or do you have some alternative explanation for that no my explanation is it was just a

00:38:54.760 continued trend and that it had been going down for a really long time and that the illusion of the

00:39:00.360 baby boom would mostly came from better fertility technology and that fertility has mostly just been

00:39:06.200 a line going downwards in europe since the 1800s okay so and what do you mean by the better fertility

00:39:12.680 technologies of the baby boom the the number of babies that died early decreased dramatically and the

00:39:19.720 that explains almost all of the rise in births well but okay now i don't hear you okay oh no yeah i cut

00:39:29.720 out there yeah basically what we argue is there wasn't a rise in births there was a rise in surviving babies

00:39:35.800 okay okay well i mean i would have to look at the data more thoroughly in regards to this but i would say

00:39:44.520 that like the fertility rate data would be probably like cleared of this phenomenon i don't know i don't

00:39:51.080 know if i'm mistaken but i would say like the fertility rate is sort of like i think this would be taken

00:39:57.240 into account right like they are measuring the children per woman yeah so i i'm not i'm not sure if i i think

00:40:05.640 there was a genuine spike in in fertility rates after world war ii but it was just you know it was clearly

00:40:13.320 limited in time it just ended at some point and it never came back well i think one thing about the

00:40:19.400 end of world war ii that people forget if we're looking at like why is israel's fertility rate high

00:40:23.720 and you have this like i'm proud to be a jew like this level of jingoism everything like that

00:40:28.680 and you look at the types of media whether it was cartoons or movies or media being produced comic

00:40:34.600 books being produced in the us at the end of world war ii you had a really high degree of jingoism

00:40:40.920 that made you proud to want more americans that was probably a big part of it as well oh well sure

00:40:46.920 sure i agree with that there was just this sort of like cultural cultural upswing and it was it

00:40:52.360 happened not only in the united states it was the baby boom was like strongest in the united states

00:40:57.320 i think in the united states there were a couple of years where the fertility rate was over three

00:41:01.320 children per woman in the 1950s and maybe maybe 1960s but it happened also in european countries

00:41:07.400 you had baby boom was i think in like france in uk in germany in germany it was weaker but yeah

00:41:14.520 yeah i remember it didn't happen in the countries uh that didn't participate in the war like ireland

00:41:20.280 didn't get one if i remember yeah yeah yeah i mean sure i would say that there was probably sense of like

00:41:27.080 relief and sense of like now we can go back to like normal life so like we are enjoying the

00:41:33.720 ability to live normal life and to have families because we've been through this like traumatic

00:41:37.880 experience and maybe even a sense maybe like in germany one would say there might be even a sense of

00:41:43.080 like okay let's not think about what happened and let's just you know let's have family let's go to

00:41:47.720 work and let's just live normal life but then like it all it all ended like in what is also just

00:41:55.240 sorry give me a minute i need to put my phone in the charger i i just need to put out my charger

00:41:59.720 from just give me 10 seconds and malcolm i think your mic came unplugged i think it's just your

00:42:08.040 laptop's mic picking up your audio now so just make sure it's touching that and the sooner we identify

00:42:14.520 the better okay okay yeah all said now and there's also this really interesting statistic about like how

00:42:24.600 in most countries the precise year in which the fertility rate went under two and basically never

00:42:30.920 recovered was 1973 which was the year of like the global oil shock prices and when like this

00:42:38.040 speculation period of the 1970s started which also shows that like while i mean one of the big questions

00:42:45.560 that people often ask is it is culture or it's economy and more and more i think about this i kind of

00:42:52.920 came to a conclusion that this line is sort of artificial because like i those things are so

00:43:01.240 interconnected like economy influences culture and culture influences economics and it's basically like

00:43:06.920 this big bundle of of like human behavior which is mutually influencing each other so i don't i don't

00:43:13.080 know if like one can really separate it completely but without a doubt as without a doubt as with the

00:43:20.200 example of the great uh depression of the 1930s and with this example of like this fertility drop in

00:43:27.240 the 1973 economic factors undoubtedly play a big role like they influence they influence things they

00:43:33.800 usually lead to like spikes and or increases that could be temporary but the thing about the 1973

00:43:41.240 decrease was that it became like permanent it never it never went up again like basically yeah

00:43:46.200 for example after the world war ii yeah i also though i feel like there's this turning point that's

00:43:51.720 not discussed a whole lot it's really difficult to track it took place starting around the 1960s

00:43:58.920 where media became more globally homogenous and more broadly consumed and also where media set

00:44:08.040 very different standards in terms of aspirations in life that were more oriented around

00:44:12.120 um like sort of aspirations that people would want as teenagers like travel glamour wealth career

00:44:19.000 um instead of family life and i don't know like at that same time i i also see this beginning of a

00:44:24.360 tipping point which just gets logarithmically worse over time that just orients people away from

00:44:30.840 immediately wanting to start a family and instead thinking a family is something that you start once you

00:44:35.000 achieve all these other all these other factors you know it's like established career wealth own a home

00:44:41.320 all these things which now i mean also yes economics plays a big role is becoming increasingly difficult

00:44:48.280 for people to achieve but still i i like culture and what what is marked as your default path in life

00:44:54.680 plus is desirable has really i think played a huge role that's that you still cover in in your content

00:45:00.280 too i just want to emphasize it oh undeniably without any doubt like the aspirations of people

00:45:06.120 in life and like what you what people perceive as an ideal life changed incredibly and it makes a huge

00:45:13.640 difference i completely i completely agree with that and probably more so with women than with men i would

00:45:20.280 say that like the change in how women perceive their lives and how women like see their ideal path in life

00:45:26.440 is is is probably more important here because in the end like women are the ones who have the biggest

00:45:33.160 like the biggest biggest words and biggest role to play in childbearing so they're like and when women

00:45:38.840 had the most violent shift in life aspirations because definitely men already like wanted to establish their

00:45:45.240 careers and build wealth and stuff and sorry that didn't mean necessarily that they were sorry she's

00:45:50.680 grabbing all the things like forego family whereas for women there is a there are trade-offs and it

00:45:57.480 does become exceedingly difficult without copious governmental or societal or family support to to

00:46:03.960 make those things happen at the same time so i i mean i agree with you like i'm not i'm not normally

00:46:09.800 the person that says that feminism plays a role but certainly like this this expectation that women should

00:46:16.520 put their careers and wealth building first before starting a family plays a huge role in the downfall

00:46:22.360 of any nation oh most definitely but but then again i also i don't know if this is true but it is

00:46:28.440 sort of interesting hypothesis i read somewhere that basically this whole like feminist movement or

00:46:35.720 this whole notion that women should like work should build careers should be very successful should

00:46:39.800 basically to a certain degree emulate men in in their like goals and standards is basically a form of

00:46:47.720 cope with the fact that men today is not able to provide for the whole family with one salary so

00:46:54.040 basically it was like okay we can't have the sort of life we used to have so we just gonna rational

00:46:59.640 rationalize why what we have now is better if you understand what i mean so i don't know very

00:47:05.560 interesting way to look at it yeah yeah yeah i i'm not sure where i where i heard this but it got

00:47:10.760 my attention my question is how do we force women to be obedient yeah this is that we get we get we

00:47:19.160 have so many articles about us that are so angry because they're all based on like our title cards

00:47:23.720 and they don't watch the episodes yeah yeah yeah and it's stuff like that it's like they want to there

00:47:29.640 was a big article in us in salon today that's like that's screeching anyway it was it was great to have

00:47:35.400 you on any final thoughts i mean as your question went how do we make women more obedient i i would

00:47:42.760 say the answer to this is well first of all i don't really know but i would say they need to want to be

00:47:49.640 obedient like in the case you can very often find people most usually like young guys that are sort of

00:47:57.720 frustrated and disaffected with their situation that really wants to go for some sort of like forced and

00:48:03.640 brutal and like top-down approach we should like we just like put a stick is their answer yeah let's

00:48:10.680 put into constitution that women need to like get married but it won't work like it won't work you

00:48:15.480 don't want to force people to have families because that would be that will be just hell for everyone

00:48:21.240 involved and for the children first and foremost so we need to come up with cultural norms that would

00:48:27.400 incentivize people to and women to like want to function in this sort of environment yeah you

00:48:34.440 know i totally agree a really good one that we used to have was this thing called marriage

00:48:41.640 but we kind of broke that it is true it is true yeah yeah but then again it's it's question once again if

00:48:48.920 the what is more important here if it is the cultural aspect or the economic aspect well since women

00:48:55.560 massively enter the workforce and start earning wages and start working they just have much lower

00:49:02.840 economic incentive to get married because they just can provide for themselves so once again it is

00:49:08.280 this big like hurricane and whirlwind of influences some culture some economical and

00:49:14.120 we just have to make some sense of it yeah well it was great to have you on go like if you haven't

00:49:21.080 checked out his channel you really should if you like our our stuff on demographics he goes into it

00:49:27.080 much more academically and a lot more detail but people are like malcolm simone i want your ideas but

00:49:32.680 in a lot more detail that's why we wrote books okay like you're on youtube you're here for the slop

00:49:38.200 yeah you ain't gonna find it on youtube no but kaiser bach on youtube is like so good really well

00:49:43.080 researched and not just regions like uh one of your recent videos i think like a month ago was sort of on the

00:49:48.280 rise of incels internationally and you sort of go into this and it's just beautifully done so thank

00:49:54.200 you for what you do everyone definitely check out the channel and yeah please keep it up and hopefully

00:49:59.800 we'll we'll be having more conversations soon thank you very much it was a pleasure and it was an honor

00:50:05.880 thank you great i know that at that time we had forgotten to hit record well now we're recording so we're

00:50:10.760 safe that i do not remember seeing the recording bar in there from last time so maybe this is the case

00:50:18.520 sorry no this is all your fault it's all my fault i have meant to be it was meant to be

00:50:25.880 well yeah honestly i'm really excited back and you've grown a lot since then right i don't remember

00:50:30.040 you being like this big you put out some amazing content too like i was at re it's like 56 000 per video

00:50:37.480 now wow you do well i i i do not really remember exactly how big the channel was when we were recording

00:50:45.640 the last video i'm not sure when it was but sure yeah i guess it it has grown a bit since then which

00:50:51.960 is great i'm very grateful for it yeah well done yes that is amazing thank you very much but i think

00:50:58.040 your channel is also growing uh as well from what i saw it grew a ton in the election cycle and now

00:51:04.120 it's gone down since then and how are things in trump's america oh my gosh amazing oh yeah too much

00:51:12.280 winning i have to tell you a lot of envy from the european side of the pond

00:51:21.080 spread it's gonna spread um so we've got a one of the things that well also we're now learning i was

00:51:27.080 just sending simone that apparently gamer gate was funded by usaid that organization that was recently

00:51:32.440 shut down and i was like oh so like this whole culture war was funded by the us government that's

00:51:36.440 fantastic yeah but incredible amount of stuff in europe was funded by this government agency

00:51:43.160 really like yeah yeah a lot of like left-wing ngos and sort of like media organization and

00:51:50.280 new sites it now is like it seems a lot of it was just funded by us taxpayers money which is like

00:51:58.680 really interesting that is well yeah i guess not surprising so what what we two things i want to

00:52:06.200 ask before we go for further yes oh how do i pronounce your channel's name kaiser botch

00:52:11.400 kaiser bauch the pronunciation is it's it's a german word so it's bauch okay it looks like a beer

00:52:19.720 yeah um like a beer yeah his his channel's name looks like a beer logo to me and sounds like a beer

00:52:26.760 it's a wheat beer i i could even imagine what it tastes like that is good like i i never thought of

00:52:32.520 this but when you say it that's something to be proud of i would say yeah you need to make merch

00:52:37.320 you have to have like your own like small batch beer brand you know it's drunk enough to make babies

00:52:43.960 yeah okay i should do that being from the okay here i'll start off i'll start up okay for anybody who

00:52:49.320 wants to come natal con is coming up very very soon you don't want to miss it so if you haven't bought

00:52:54.920 tickets yet and you intend to go where you're thinking about going now is the time to go get them

00:52:59.080 you can get a discount with the code word collins all caps and you can find it either just by googling

00:53:04.760 natalcon or natalism.org it is march 28th through 29th in austin texas

Based Camp - March 03, 2025

Comparative Fertility Rates with KaiserBauch

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