TRIGGERnometry - Population Collapse is a Massive Problem

00:00:00.600 We got more deaths and births in the UK for the first time last year.

00:00:05.520 The fact that you've gone from seven, eight, nine workers per retiree when Japan was thriving to one to one.

00:00:12.660 And in Britain, we're moving rapidly from three workers to every retiree to two.

00:00:18.440 It's falling dramatically low, as low as two thirds of a child per couple in Korea,

00:00:25.060 which means 100 grandparents, 33 parents, 11 children.

00:00:28.980 So I think this is a completely unprecedented scenario.

00:00:32.940 I think we are entering uncharted waters and I'm quite concerned.

00:00:37.260 There is going to be a competition for the young and well-educated.

00:00:40.680 This is a ticking time bomb, isn't it?

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00:01:30.920 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

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00:01:37.660 April 28th through June 7th, 2026.

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00:01:45.480 Dr. Paul Mullen, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:47.480 Thank you very much.

00:01:48.420 You are, of course, a demographer.

00:01:50.020 And your latest book is called No One Left, Why the World Needs More Children.

00:01:53.540 We want to talk about demographics with you.

00:01:55.900 It's an area of expertise.

00:01:56.700 It's something you've been talking about extensively.

00:01:59.060 So first and foremost, it's an issue that has come to the fore in public conversation,

00:02:04.140 even though it's kind of a fringe issue still to many people.

00:02:08.400 But why is it a significant thing?

00:02:11.140 And what is going on with demographics, particularly in the Western world and perhaps also beyond?

00:02:15.820 It's a significant thing because people matter, whether you're looking at economics,

00:02:19.700 you're looking at history, you're looking at current affairs, what's going on in the news,

00:02:24.640 flows of refugees, working age populations, unemployment.

00:02:27.840 It's all very much driven by the size of population, the growth or shrinkage,

00:02:32.980 where they're moving to or where they're moving from.

00:02:35.000 And I kind of made it a bit of a mission of mine, quite apart from the prenatalism,

00:02:38.860 which we'll come on to, to try and help explain the past, the present and the future

00:02:42.960 in terms of what was going on in terms of population.

00:02:46.600 And then how did that affect the way things turned out?

00:02:49.260 So, for example, my second book, which is about the history of population change,

00:02:54.840 I look at a whole range of things from the Louisiana Purchase and the Americans moving

00:02:58.600 across the whole continent to the origins and the outcome of the First World War

00:03:03.020 to the end of the Japanese economic experiment.

00:03:06.780 That's the human tide.

00:03:08.060 And I show how in each of these, in many events of history which are well known to people,

00:03:12.840 there was the hidden hand of demography, not the only thing that was going on,

00:03:16.440 but you can't really understand the event unless you get the demographic dimension.

00:03:21.900 And then the next book after that, my third book, Tomorrow's People,

00:03:25.920 was really to say, well, if that's true of the past, if population change has driven the past,

00:03:30.560 it must be changing the present and the future, what's going on in the world today?

00:03:34.360 What is it that we see happening in current affairs, in the news?

00:03:37.360 And what's the future going to look like when we understand how population is developing?

00:03:43.100 So you then ask me, what's actually going on now?

00:03:47.980 I take a very global look.

00:03:49.600 The answer is, you go through a demographic transition.

00:03:52.780 I mean, very crudely, poor countries, which is the whole world before 1800,

00:03:57.300 lots of kids, not always maximum.

00:04:00.020 Some people were taken out of the marriage market for various reasons.

00:04:03.600 Marriage was delayed.

00:04:04.440 So there were various social mechanisms for controlling fertility.

00:04:07.220 But broadly, women had lots and lots of children.

00:04:09.600 They couldn't control their fertility very effectively.

00:04:11.880 People died young.

00:04:13.080 Lots of children died in their first year.

00:04:14.940 And so, I mean, if you'd had a population with six children, which was pretty normal, and they hadn't all died off, if you'd tripled every generation, I calculated that by the beginning of the fourth or fifth century, I can't remember which, with a quarter of a billion people at the era of Julius Caesar, by four or five hundred, you'd have had one metre per person, standing metre in the world.

00:04:36.860 The reason that didn't happen was not because people weren't having large families, six at least, but because there was, this was Malthus as well, this endless downward pressure on population growth of people dying.

00:04:47.720 And if the war didn't get them and disease didn't get them, eventually, the planet couldn't possibly have fed that many people.

00:04:53.340 And the planet's ability to feed people grows very, very slowly.

00:04:56.160 So it takes from Caesar to Queen Victoria for the world's population to quadruple.

00:05:00.420 And that was the old regime.

00:05:01.780 Then you have this incredible demographic transition, it's not a long story, I won't go into it in detail, but essentially, first of all, your mortality rate falls.

00:05:09.520 You're still having loads of kids, they're not all dying off, people are living longer, population explodes, and then eventually fertility rates go down.

00:05:16.300 And that happens first in the British Isles, in North America, and then it spreads.

00:05:20.300 So parts of the world today are still in that demographic transition.

00:05:23.680 You'll see countries in Africa still have very high fertility rates.

00:05:26.320 They're really bringing their mortality rates down, even though they're still quite poor, they're having population explosion.

00:05:31.780 More and more of the world is moving into that point where they have low death rates, long life expectancies, very low for mortality, but very few children.

00:05:40.620 But instead of the thing settling at about two kids, which would lead to a stable population, it's falling dramatically low.

00:05:48.060 As low as two-thirds of a child per couple in Korea, which means 100 grandparents, 33 parents, 11 children.

00:05:56.940 So my fourth book, the most recent one, is really saying, why is this happening?

00:06:01.760 What can we do?

00:06:02.480 But I think just the fact that people know more about it, that people become more aware of this incredible demographic vortex that we're facing, is worthwhile.

00:06:11.820 So that's kind of the progression of my thinking and my writing on demography.

00:06:15.740 So the inevitable question, look, I think there are lots of people who are interested in addressing this and trying to solve it in some way for the reasons that we'll discuss, given the consequences of it.

00:06:28.740 But in order to solve something, you do need to understand why it's happening.

00:06:32.320 And I have not heard, and this is why you're here, anybody where I've gone, okay, this person has like got it.

00:06:39.500 They've described the entire set of the causal reasons.

00:06:43.840 So why are we having fewer children?

00:06:47.440 Why are we below replacement?

00:06:49.080 You'd really want it to be a simple answer.

00:06:52.920 You'd want someone to say, aha, I've got the answer.

00:06:56.080 But unfortunately, it's not that simple because it's so general, because we're seeing it in Jamaica and Japan, Thailand and Taiwan and Finland, because it's so general, almost becoming universal outside sub-Saharan Africa and a few countries in Asia, people think there must be a single cause and therefore it must be simple.

00:07:17.800 Actually, probably if you had a god's eye view or a much cleverer demographer than me, maybe who will exist in the future, they could crack it.

00:07:27.680 But the best that we can do today is to say it's multi-causal and you can group those causes into two buckets, the material and the cultural.

00:07:35.980 So let's start with the material.

00:07:37.780 So we know in Britain, for example, housing is very expensive.

00:07:41.120 The trouble with that as a universal explanation is where housing is cheap, some cities in China have built lots of flats.

00:07:47.800 Parts of the UK have relatively cheap housing, parts of Germany, parts of the Balkans.

00:07:52.660 I don't think the whole of Russia and Ukraine has expensive housing, but they all have low fertility.

00:07:57.360 So that doesn't mean it's not causing low fertility in parts of the UK and lots of the rest of the world.

00:08:02.240 But if you lifted that as a cause, if everybody could get cheap housing, it wouldn't solve it.

00:08:06.900 So housing is part of expensive childcare.

00:08:09.740 But again, if you look at parts of the world where childcare is very, very subsidised, fertility rates are still very low.

00:08:15.900 Parts of the Baltics, parts of Germany, if you can get the childcare, it's very subsidised.

00:08:20.300 So again, I'm not dismissing.

00:08:21.800 I've got children of my own who are having children of their own.

00:08:24.160 I'm not dismissing the cost of childcare as important.

00:08:27.700 But it's a cause.

00:08:30.080 But if you get rid of that cause, there are other things depressing fertility rates.

00:08:33.680 So I always say that material factors are important, but they won't solve it by themselves.

00:08:39.920 So what's the other thing that's going on?

00:08:41.660 The other thing that's going on is cultural.

00:08:44.340 And culture is much more difficult to put your finger on.

00:08:48.080 There seems to be something about modernity which is depressing fertility rates.

00:08:53.640 There are a whole range of explanations.

00:08:55.400 There's something to do clearly with women's aspirations and education.

00:08:58.960 And I always say, you know, I welcome women's education and aspirations.

00:09:02.100 My mother was the prime earner when I was a child.

00:09:05.560 My wife has earned more than me.

00:09:07.360 My daughters have both got as good education as my son, and they're leading their careers.

00:09:11.700 I don't want that to change.

00:09:13.760 But we need to find a way to reconcile that with producing a demographic future for ourselves.

00:09:20.620 So there's something about women's rights and feminism and education.

00:09:24.960 But I don't want to get rid of that.

00:09:27.080 We can't get rid of that.

00:09:28.120 And if the problem is too few people in the workforce, it wouldn't help if we did.

00:09:31.240 So we've got to find a way.

00:09:32.780 And I think younger, better minds than mine will come up with those sorts of solutions.

00:09:36.660 How can we have a 2030s feminism that's not like the 1950s,

00:09:41.440 but that combines women fully self-actualizing and having children?

00:09:46.100 So there's something about women.

00:09:47.540 There's something about relationships.

00:09:49.280 People are having less sex.

00:09:50.780 People are getting married later.

00:09:52.800 People are coupling up later and less.

00:09:54.680 There seems to be a political divergence between men and women.

00:09:57.620 That could be part of the picture as well.

00:09:59.820 Well, I think at root, though, there is a lack of a pronatal culture.

00:10:05.400 So all these things will exist.

00:10:07.720 We will have feminism.

00:10:08.680 We will have women's education.

00:10:09.780 And we may have something of a breakdown of relationships and a load of other cultural

00:10:13.520 effects and a decline of religion.

00:10:15.160 But ultimately, if we have a really pronatal culture, if we had a culture and a civilization

00:10:22.580 which really valued having children, where that was really high status, where that was

00:10:27.060 something people really aspired to, it would overcome all those issues.

00:10:31.240 And the example I always give is Israel, where they are extremely wealthy, extremely densely

00:10:36.160 populated, extremely urban, extremely educated.

00:10:39.920 Women's rights are by far the best in the Middle East.

00:10:43.840 And yet, people are still having children.

00:10:46.500 An average of around three per couple, whereas it's less than two in every other OECD country.

00:10:52.920 So my point is, all these things that seem to be militating against people having children,

00:11:00.180 they're all there.

00:11:00.880 But if people really have the priority, if people want it, if people make it the most

00:11:06.320 important thing in their lives, if it's valued as it should be, and if the lack of children

00:11:11.840 was understood as the problem it is, then through all of these issues, we would overcome.

00:11:16.680 So I think the ultimate cause, sorry to give you such a rambling answer, the ultimate cause

00:11:20.540 for me is what do people really value in their lives?

00:11:24.360 And if they value having children enough, they'll have them.

00:11:27.780 Which brings me to the one thing you haven't mentioned in your analysis, which applies

00:11:32.420 very much to Israel, which is that the people who have the highest birth rates in Israel are

00:11:36.440 the ultra-religious.

00:11:39.200 To what extent is the decline in religiosity affecting birth rates?

00:11:46.700 Well, my PhD supervisor, Eric Kaufman, who I think you've had on this show, wrote a book

00:11:51.980 called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

00:11:53.840 I'm very proud of that book, because I'm the first person mentioned in the acknowledgements.

00:11:57.800 I think it's the first time my name ever appeared in print.

00:12:00.840 And he was wrestling with this problem.

00:12:02.340 We often talk about it.

00:12:04.640 Can we have a secular society which has a decent fertility rate?

00:12:10.260 Now, Eric's view is in the long term, if you have communities that have a high fertility

00:12:15.420 rate, and at the same time are very good at walling themselves off, as the ultra-orthodox

00:12:20.940 are in Israel and outside, then they will grow exponentially.

00:12:24.460 And if you run that forward a few hundred years, that has an amazing effect, statistically.

00:12:29.700 Against that, I have a friend who comes from a traditional Catholic family, and I think she

00:12:36.500 only had three kids because she married late, but one brother's got 13, and one's got 12,

00:12:40.500 and the sister's got 10.

00:12:41.400 And the trouble with those sorts of communities is Catholicism has evolved as the majority

00:12:46.460 religion.

00:12:47.280 They are not particularly good at walling themselves off.

00:12:50.000 They don't have to live near the church, as you do have to live near a synagogue if you're

00:12:53.800 walking on Shabbat.

00:12:55.100 They have a school network, but those very traditional Catholics find it very hard to

00:13:00.580 control those schools and keep them really traditional.

00:13:03.740 And so I suspect a lot of those kids won't have 10 or 12 of their own.

00:13:06.580 So there are high-fertility religious groups, but I think they dissipate, and then there

00:13:12.100 are high-fertility religious groups that retain their young.

00:13:16.080 If you can do that, you've got a growth model.

00:13:18.820 Now, I'm not sure that will carry on for that long.

00:13:22.520 I don't know how many generations, families of seven, eight, nine in the current environment

00:13:26.720 will be able to hold on to all their children.

00:13:29.600 There are so many pressures.

00:13:30.580 For example, I know some ultra-orthodox Jews in England who resisted.

00:13:34.840 They've got six children, so sort of moderate family for their community.

00:13:37.820 They resisted the internet for their children.

00:13:39.680 Along came COVID.

00:13:40.460 The kids had to go online for schooling.

00:13:42.480 So there are so many pressures.

00:13:45.140 And to retain your children for generation to generation is very difficult.

00:13:48.840 So I think Eric's thesis is these groups will grow and grow and grow ultimately.

00:13:52.480 And I think it's almost impossible to know whether that's the case.

00:13:55.620 So the question really is, if religion is breaking down, if secularism is the way forward,

00:14:01.760 or the future, and I'm not here to stand on a pulpit and sort of argue for religion,

00:14:07.500 then can we invent a secular, just like feminism, can we invent a feminism that is fully aligned

00:14:13.380 to pronatalism?

00:14:14.840 And there's lots of historical precedent for it.

00:14:17.240 Mary Woollenstonecraft.

00:14:18.240 There's a whole literature of feminism about pronatalism and antinatalism.

00:14:21.920 It's a debate within feminism.

00:14:23.480 There are pronatal strands within feminism.

00:14:25.620 I think we have to invent a secularism that doesn't rely on religion for two reasons,

00:14:32.260 to have children.

00:14:33.140 First reason is I don't want to live in a...

00:14:36.180 Whilst I'm happy to have groups and sects and we can accommodate them in a liberal society,

00:14:40.460 if they became the majority, I think our liberal societies would collapse.

00:14:43.900 I don't think we would be...

00:14:45.120 We would no longer have the overarching infrastructure.

00:14:48.020 I mean, again, an example I give is a friend of mine who's a dentist.

00:14:51.400 And he most...

00:14:52.620 He's a dentist for children.

00:14:53.800 Most of his patients are ultra-orthodox Jews, and they need him.

00:15:00.160 And it's not that they couldn't be dentists, but you have to study biology and you have to go to university.

00:15:05.080 You have to do a load of things they'd rather their children didn't do.

00:15:07.740 To keep the utilities going, using the term in the broadest sense of dentistry as a utility,

00:15:13.860 to keep the lights on, we can't all be ultra-religious sects that retain their young,

00:15:20.980 hold off the rest of the world.

00:15:21.920 So I don't think we can...

00:15:23.880 That's the model.

00:15:24.660 That is not the model for the future.

00:15:26.560 And what concerns me is that we end up in a world where these groups do have large numbers of children,

00:15:33.080 and that they then assimilate into a secular core where they dissipate.

00:15:37.320 It reminds me rather like the 18th century city of London.

00:15:40.120 High-fertility countryside, endlessly attracting people to London.

00:15:44.020 But London was a population sink.

00:15:45.460 People didn't have large families.

00:15:47.020 It was very unhealthy.

00:15:48.440 And I think secular society could end up being like that.

00:15:51.200 It sort of draws in these growing religious groups, and it functions because it manages

00:15:57.120 to assimilate them to a certain extent or some of their offspring, but it doesn't regenerate itself.

00:16:02.680 So, you know, my appeal is just as we need to invent a pronatal feminism, we need to invent a pronatal secularism.

00:16:11.180 I don't think we can rely on religion to do it.

00:16:12.960 And in Israel, whilst you're absolutely right, if you divide the population according to self-identifying religiosity,

00:16:20.540 the more religious, the more children, but even the self-identified seculars have two children.

00:16:25.700 So that's better than any other country in the OECD.

00:16:28.960 So I don't think it's inevitable that secular societies need be low fertility.

00:16:33.900 We just have to rethink things, I think.

00:16:36.300 And, Paul, we've talked about the causes and the potential causes.

00:16:40.260 What are the effects of this crisis that we're talking about now?

00:16:44.500 So let's take the number.

00:16:45.680 If we have a replacement rate of one, there's a lot of people who are watching this, who are listening to this,

00:16:50.620 who goes, well, I've got no idea what that actually means.

00:16:53.740 That's just a stat to me.

00:16:55.340 So let's talk about what a replacement rate of one means, how we got to it,

00:16:59.640 and then let's look at the effects cascading through society as a result of that number one.

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00:18:31.360 So what is the replacement rate?

00:18:34.380 The replacement rate is the number of children a woman would need to have,

00:18:37.960 and it's measured by a woman, but just because it's measured by a woman,

00:18:40.800 we shouldn't think it's only the responsibility of women.

00:18:42.840 I do think that's important to say.

00:18:45.000 Maybe we'll come on to talk about how important men are in this.

00:18:47.780 But per couple, let's call it per couple.

00:18:49.580 Each couple needs to have a couple of kids, obviously, to replace themselves.

00:18:53.160 Now, if we go back to the 18th century or the 17th century or parts of the world until relatively recently,

00:18:59.300 you needed to have a lot more than that.

00:19:01.020 If four of your six children were going to die before they completed their fertility,

00:19:04.680 you needed to have six.

00:19:06.000 And one of the explanations as to why fertility comes down from very high to at least moderate

00:19:10.680 is people know their children aren't going to die.

00:19:13.920 But let's assume everyone lives, more or less everyone in our modern societies,

00:19:17.960 lives to 50, say, the end of their fertile years, roughly.

00:19:22.280 Then two would suffice, obviously, because two people get replaced by two people.

00:19:26.000 Now, that doesn't mean the population won't grow.

00:19:29.160 I mean, forget migration for a minute.

00:19:30.540 That obviously, in or out, will affect the side of the population.

00:19:33.160 But also, if the interval between births grows,

00:19:37.160 then the population would decline a little bit until that's stabilised.

00:19:40.260 If you had a lot of old people dying off, like a load of baby boomers like me,

00:19:44.500 at a point we're all dying off, then the population could decline.

00:19:48.600 So the converse of that is what's happened in Britain.

00:19:52.240 We've had below-replacement fertility since the early 70s.

00:19:56.040 But think of the population pyramid back then.

00:19:58.120 Not many old people, they'd all died young, or lots of them had.

00:20:00.760 They'd had quite big families.

00:20:02.200 So you had lots and lots of young women relative to the population,

00:20:05.500 having not many children, but they'd still have more births each year

00:20:08.800 than that small number of people dying off.

00:20:11.040 The replacement is the long term.

00:20:13.000 Eventually, if you're below replacement, you'll have more deaths than births.

00:20:16.680 We got below replacement in Britain in the early 70s.

00:20:19.680 Only last year, for the first time, did we get more deaths than births.

00:20:23.520 Ignoring migration, we got more deaths than births in the UK for the first time last year.

00:20:28.500 In Germany, they've had more deaths than births since the 1970s.

00:20:32.040 So you have what you can call organic population decline.

00:20:35.020 Ignoring the ins and outs, more deaths than births, the population starts to decline.

00:20:39.640 Before that happens, the working age population starts to decline.

00:20:43.200 Now, when I joined the workforce in the 1980s,

00:20:45.660 there were about two of us joining for every 60-something leaving.

00:20:49.440 And there was unemployment, there were problems.

00:20:51.440 Nevertheless, there was a Thatcherite population dividend.

00:20:55.540 In other words, what is a population dividend?

00:20:57.720 Not that many old people.

00:20:58.820 Still in the 80s, there weren't that many.

00:21:00.280 Lots of boomers coming into the workforce.

00:21:02.620 They weren't having that many children or marrying early.

00:21:04.880 So you didn't have to spend that much on education.

00:21:07.020 You didn't have to spend a ton on the old in terms of intensive health care and pensions.

00:21:12.580 Lots of young people entering the workforce.

00:21:14.480 That's when an economy does very well.

00:21:16.440 When does an economy not do very well?

00:21:18.360 Take Japan.

00:21:19.400 Back in the 1960s, there were seven or eight or even nine people of working age.

00:21:23.660 For every retiree in Japan.

00:21:25.980 So roughly 20 to 65 versus 65 plus.

00:21:29.460 There were seven, eight, nine workers paying taxes to support that small,

00:21:33.880 all helping out with the, whether you look at it in terms of government financing

00:21:37.540 or money generally or just the labor force.

00:21:40.560 You can carry that number of old people very easily

00:21:43.480 when you've got seven or eight people of working age to support them.

00:21:47.980 When we get, so Japan's population went up.

00:21:49.660 When it goes, and then they've had a very, very long period of very low fertility,

00:21:53.660 more deaths than births, declining working age, declining population.

00:21:57.200 They have a declining population every year now.

00:21:59.320 Of course, they don't have that much immigration.

00:22:00.980 They have a bit.

00:22:01.860 When Japan gets back down to 100 million, circa 2050,

00:22:05.760 there will be one worker for every retiree.

00:22:09.220 That's one 20 to 65-year-old to a 65-year-old plus.

00:22:12.160 Now, you can move the retirement age a little bit or even a lot,

00:22:15.760 but it's not going to change the fact that you've gone from seven, eight, nine workers

00:22:20.620 per retiree when Japan was thriving to one to one.

00:22:24.980 And in Britain, we're moving rapidly from three workers to every retiree to two.

00:22:30.020 And we'll go that way as well.

00:22:31.660 The problem is not the absolute number of people.

00:22:34.060 I think there are great reasons to have children.

00:22:35.960 I've had three of my own.

00:22:37.020 In some ways, I regret I didn't have more.

00:22:38.760 If I'd known I was going to be a pronatalist,

00:22:40.700 sitting here banging the bully pulpit,

00:22:42.740 I would have acceded to my wife's request and had another one.

00:22:46.740 But I think children are wonderful.

00:22:48.300 They're life-enhancing, et cetera, et cetera.

00:22:50.360 You know, I could wax lyrical.

00:22:52.020 But that's a question, ultimately, of preference and taste.

00:22:56.420 The economics is quite scientific.

00:23:00.700 And I think the prime minister before last of Japan

00:23:03.780 talked about societal collapse.

00:23:06.120 We don't know.

00:23:06.760 We've never seen societies in which the pyramid looks like that

00:23:10.560 rather than that.

00:23:11.280 The natural pyramid was like that.

00:23:13.420 As older people lived longer, it turned into something like that.

00:23:17.080 But if older people haven't had enough children

00:23:19.000 and their children haven't had enough children like career,

00:23:21.120 as I said, 100 grandparents, 33 children, 11 grandchildren,

00:23:24.800 and it looks like that,

00:23:26.020 we don't know what these societies are going to be like.

00:23:28.440 But we can guess.

00:23:29.620 So, for example,

00:23:30.300 I think the sclerotic nature of all European economies

00:23:34.520 is down to the fact that they've all had far too few births

00:23:39.560 for a couple of generations.

00:23:41.400 They're all sclerotic.

00:23:42.920 They're all old.

00:23:44.080 They're not inventive.

00:23:45.000 They're not creative.

00:23:45.720 They're not energetic.

00:23:46.620 And they've got more and more old people

00:23:48.500 using very intense health services,

00:23:52.520 needing pensions, needing social care,

00:23:55.020 and fewer and fewer people paying the bills.

00:23:57.900 In fact, I just wrote a paper for policy exchange

00:24:00.760 with my friend Philip Pilkington

00:24:02.680 called Small Families or Small Government, Small State.

00:24:06.300 The basic argument there was,

00:24:07.920 if you happen to be a Thatcherite

00:24:10.660 or a small-state conservative,

00:24:13.980 you need to understand that

00:24:15.580 with the kind of demography we've got today,

00:24:17.600 you're never going to get back to a state

00:24:19.980 that is not spending tons of money

00:24:22.020 and taxing very heavily,

00:24:23.200 unless you're prepared to wind up the whole welfare state.

00:24:25.920 Because the balance of the elderly

00:24:27.720 to the working age population

00:24:29.080 means either you're going to abandon the old people,

00:24:31.280 or if you're not going to abandon them,

00:24:32.880 you're going to provide them

00:24:33.840 with any kind of decent civilized services.

00:24:36.440 You're going to have to have a heavier and heavier tax burden

00:24:38.900 on a fewer and fewer number of young people.

00:24:41.260 Those young people will be less and less creative

00:24:43.180 because there just aren't enough of them.

00:24:45.200 We see that in Japan,

00:24:46.480 the decline of young people in Japan,

00:24:48.140 decline of patents.

00:24:49.080 You can track it quite clearly.

00:24:51.080 There's no energy in society.

00:24:52.820 And I look around Britain today,

00:24:55.600 and I was born in 1964,

00:24:57.280 so I've seen Britain in many phases.

00:24:59.320 I look around Europe today

00:25:00.460 and compare it to the Europe

00:25:01.720 I first sort of discovered

00:25:03.400 when I was in my teens and 20s.

00:25:06.280 And I think so much is down to the fact

00:25:08.380 that people haven't had enough of their own children.

00:25:10.420 So much is down to this aging,

00:25:13.820 this massive requirement from immigration from overseas,

00:25:16.360 which we may talk about.

00:25:17.380 And I wish politicians understood this better.

00:25:19.960 I think, does Rachel Reeves,

00:25:22.080 when she sees the problems of the economy,

00:25:24.320 when she struggles,

00:25:24.980 she probably really does want growth,

00:25:26.440 but does she understand

00:25:27.540 the fundamental problem she's up against

00:25:30.980 from a demographic point of view?

00:25:32.360 And after 50 years of having

00:25:34.320 below-replacement fertility in the UK,

00:25:37.520 we've never had a front-ranking politician

00:25:39.360 talk about it until Keir Starmer.

00:25:42.140 And what did he have to say?

00:25:43.600 I'm not going to tell children how many...

00:25:45.720 I'm going to have to tell parents

00:25:46.940 how many children to have.

00:25:48.120 I mean, no one's talking about telling people

00:25:50.020 or forcing people,

00:25:51.160 but I thought that was the most unhelpful

00:25:53.400 contribution to the debate.

00:25:55.520 I'm a left-leaning, cosmopolitan type,

00:25:59.880 and it doesn't fit in with my values,

00:26:02.620 so I'm not going to go there.

00:26:03.780 And as I always say,

00:26:04.860 and I repeatedly said on podcasts,

00:26:07.180 in my writings,

00:26:08.540 pronatalism should not be a left or right thing.

00:26:10.520 There's a long tradition of pronatalism on the left.

00:26:13.820 Marx wrote extremely eloquently against Malthus

00:26:16.380 from a pronatal point of view.

00:26:18.480 The Soviet Union,

00:26:19.840 the East European countries,

00:26:20.920 gave medals to mothers.

00:26:22.520 Cuba gave tax benefits to people to have children.

00:26:25.380 Macron, the man of the centre,

00:26:26.860 talks about demographic rearmament.

00:26:28.860 It's only in the Anglo world

00:26:30.260 that we seem to think there's something sinister,

00:26:32.740 excuse the term,

00:26:33.600 because of course it means left,

00:26:34.620 sinister and right-wing

00:26:35.740 about having children.

00:26:39.700 Well, not necessarily about having children,

00:26:40.860 but about being a proponent

00:26:42.900 of the need for a society to have children.

00:26:45.640 Paul, what you're really describing here,

00:26:47.520 and you've put the case very eloquently,

00:26:50.100 is this is a ticking time bomb, isn't it?

00:26:54.120 It's a terrible ticking time bomb.

00:26:55.860 And again, people don't always understand this.

00:26:58.140 A friend of mine in the States

00:26:59.320 put it in terms of bank accounts,

00:27:00.820 which I thought was quite good.

00:27:01.580 So we see Korea.

00:27:02.680 We see two-thirds of a child per couple.

00:27:05.740 And we see that's a disaster.

00:27:07.040 But actually, Korea has an advantage.

00:27:08.800 And Korea's advantage is

00:27:09.760 it didn't start happening until the 80s.

00:27:12.220 So it's like they're running

00:27:13.700 their bank account down very fast,

00:27:15.480 but they've got quite a lot in the bank.

00:27:17.280 Japan has a much higher fertility rate than Korea.

00:27:19.880 It's like 1.2 versus 0.8 or 0.6.

00:27:23.420 But they've had it for so long

00:27:24.920 that it's got into the demographic structure.

00:27:28.160 In Britain, we never had a super low fertility rate.

00:27:30.940 We're now getting a very low one.

00:27:32.600 But for a long time, it's at 1.8, 1.9, 1.7, too low.

00:27:36.280 But it was slowly eating away the demographic fabric.

00:27:40.200 It was slowly eating away the bank account, if you like.

00:27:44.740 So we were never running the bank account down terribly fast,

00:27:47.500 but we've been running it down for a very, very long time.

00:27:50.320 And the problem is that to reverse it,

00:27:52.600 first of all, the first thing we need,

00:27:54.640 we'll probably talk about this some more,

00:27:55.740 is some government acknowledgement.

00:27:57.180 Then we need some government policy,

00:27:58.800 including changing the culture,

00:28:00.480 which is not easy for governments to do.

00:28:01.700 It takes a long time.

00:28:03.260 And even if it's started tomorrow,

00:28:05.720 we're then going to have the extra burden

00:28:07.500 of lots of children to look after,

00:28:09.180 precisely when we've got the burden

00:28:10.400 of lots of older people to look after.

00:28:12.120 So it's really difficult to turn around.

00:28:14.620 It's a long-term process.

00:28:16.700 My friend, Philip Pilkington,

00:28:18.060 who I've mentioned, an economist,

00:28:20.460 says that a lot of people think

00:28:21.940 it's a bit like the economy.

00:28:23.400 Oh, inflation's too high.

00:28:24.720 We'll raise interest rates in an 18 months

00:28:26.700 or six months or whatever.

00:28:28.300 There's a short-term horizon

00:28:29.500 and inflation will come down.

00:28:30.780 That's not what this is like.

00:28:31.960 This is deeply cultural.

00:28:33.580 No one's been talking about it

00:28:34.760 for the 50 years we've been running

00:28:36.480 our bank account down, as it were.

00:28:38.680 And when we get it,

00:28:40.640 when we turn it around,

00:28:42.140 it's going to be decades

00:28:43.840 before the effects are really felt,

00:28:45.780 because a newborn child

00:28:46.640 doesn't enter the workforce for 20 years.

00:28:49.220 But if not now, when?

00:28:50.660 If we don't start from here,

00:28:51.800 we wouldn't start from here, ideally,

00:28:53.820 but this is where we are.

00:28:54.860 So I think we need to have

00:28:57.300 these sorts of conversations.

00:28:58.360 And we do need to have these conversations,

00:28:59.600 because you're talking about taxing the young

00:29:01.900 in order to support the old,

00:29:03.840 which is, I mean, you could argue

00:29:05.440 we've been doing that for quite a while already,

00:29:07.960 economically speaking.

00:29:09.740 And then you go, well, if that's the case,

00:29:13.040 why are young people going to stick in this country?

00:29:15.160 That sounds like a terrible deal.

00:29:17.120 So what's the point of them being here?

00:29:18.800 If I was that young person

00:29:20.220 and that was a deal offered to me,

00:29:22.240 I'd be like, I'm leaving, mate.

00:29:23.900 And I'm going to go somewhere where I'm wanted.

00:29:25.720 That's exactly right.

00:29:26.740 Now, in some countries,

00:29:27.720 that's going to happen more than in other countries.

00:29:29.540 In Britain, for example,

00:29:30.540 we have a very mobile workforce.

00:29:32.400 People speak English.

00:29:33.460 People are very plugged into the global economy.

00:29:35.880 It's true that the problems we have here

00:29:37.640 are going to be the same

00:29:38.560 in lots of other developed countries.

00:29:39.880 But you'll have places where it isn't the case,

00:29:42.140 Dubai, say.

00:29:43.340 Or there'll be a country that says,

00:29:45.020 the young people come here.

00:29:45.880 If you come here from overseas,

00:29:46.780 we're not going to tax you.

00:29:48.040 There'll be opportunities.

00:29:49.620 It's much harder in a place like Japan,

00:29:51.120 where people are more monolingual

00:29:52.900 and they're more likely to be

00:29:53.940 very, very embedded

00:29:54.860 in their country and culture.

00:29:56.720 But I think you're absolutely right.

00:29:58.160 There is going to be a competition

00:29:59.400 for the young and well-educated

00:30:01.320 in the future.

00:30:02.560 And the idea that they'll just stick it out.

00:30:05.120 And, you know,

00:30:05.660 I see this with my own family,

00:30:07.780 the younger generations of my family,

00:30:09.360 nephews, nieces, children.

00:30:10.660 The tax burden they're already under,

00:30:12.320 and we ain't seen anything yet.

00:30:13.780 The tax burden they're already under

00:30:15.440 makes them think very carefully.

00:30:17.700 So, on this current trajectory,

00:30:20.560 you will get exactly

00:30:21.780 what you're talking about.

00:30:22.540 People will leave.

00:30:23.640 The tax base will decline even further.

00:30:25.860 The whole thing will become unsupportable.

00:30:27.860 And that, I think, is why

00:30:28.760 even the Prime Minister of Japan,

00:30:30.300 who's probably got his youngsters

00:30:31.500 more locked in than the youngsters here,

00:30:33.880 is talking about societal collapse.

00:30:35.460 We don't know how it will collapse,

00:30:37.400 but we can envisage it.

00:30:38.440 We can envisage it that you say,

00:30:39.800 we cannot withdraw these services politically.

00:30:42.600 These older people vote.

00:30:43.920 They're insisting on it.

00:30:44.880 Triple lock, NHS, etc., etc.

00:30:46.880 We cannot leave old people

00:30:48.640 to rot in their own houses or flats.

00:30:50.680 We wouldn't want to.

00:30:52.040 We can't support that

00:30:53.340 without a level of taxation or borrowing

00:30:55.560 that the taxation will crush the economy

00:30:58.380 and drive off the young,

00:30:59.440 so we borrow.

00:31:00.520 No coincidence that Japan,

00:31:02.500 which has had this problem the worst for 50 years,

00:31:04.860 has got the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the OECD,

00:31:07.820 250% roughly versus 100%.

00:31:10.360 So you borrow up to the point

00:31:12.960 that you hit a sort of,

00:31:14.200 the kind of moment we had under Liz's trust.

00:31:16.660 You can argue whether that was really manufactured

00:31:19.120 or it was part of the market,

00:31:20.320 but the fact is there'll come a point

00:31:22.020 when people will say,

00:31:22.880 actually, buying government bonds

00:31:24.480 in a world where the population's declining,

00:31:26.820 the tax base is declining,

00:31:28.420 are not going to do it,

00:31:29.260 and you'll have to raise interest rates

00:31:30.920 to the point that it makes it worth the while.

00:31:33.280 And the economy...

00:31:33.960 There are a whole range of ways

00:31:35.760 that you can see that the economy

00:31:38.240 and society is going to come

00:31:40.240 under enormous pressure,

00:31:41.180 if not collapse.

00:31:41.740 I don't want to be too apocalyptic.

00:31:45.360 But I just don't see how the thing carries on

00:31:47.500 as it is at the moment

00:31:48.600 with our expectations

00:31:49.640 of a kind of civilized society

00:31:52.200 for older people

00:31:53.300 without some kind of revival

00:31:55.540 of fertility rates.

00:31:57.740 Paul, and you mentioned

00:31:59.340 that we don't have any precedent for this.

00:32:02.300 Is there really never been a time

00:32:03.820 in the history of major civilizations

00:32:05.800 when they stopped reproducing

00:32:08.460 in the way we are?

00:32:09.420 No, no.

00:32:09.760 So, first of all,

00:32:10.460 some people say there was in Rome,

00:32:13.120 but my guess,

00:32:13.900 and that's part of the collapse

00:32:15.020 of the Roman Empire,

00:32:15.820 I don't believe...

00:32:16.500 First of all,

00:32:16.780 the data from Rome is really bad.

00:32:19.080 Secondly,

00:32:20.180 I think the data we have on Rome

00:32:22.220 is Rome rather than the Roman Empire, right?

00:32:24.260 And Rome could always attract people

00:32:25.540 from elsewhere,

00:32:26.340 particularly in the late Roman Empire

00:32:27.660 where citizenship was kind of generalized.

00:32:30.820 I don't think methods of birth control

00:32:34.280 were general enough

00:32:35.340 or understood enough

00:32:36.680 to really control fertility

00:32:38.240 in the Roman Empire.

00:32:39.200 So, I think among the elites,

00:32:40.660 among certain elites

00:32:41.480 who perhaps were quite clever

00:32:43.000 at certain practices

00:32:43.920 or were prepared not to marry

00:32:46.320 or whatever,

00:32:48.920 they probably did have low fertility rates.

00:32:51.860 The French worried about it

00:32:52.880 in the 18th century.

00:32:53.640 But I think until at least France

00:32:55.880 in the late 18th century globally,

00:32:57.980 it was only ever an elite phenomenon.

00:33:00.520 It was a small number of people

00:33:01.940 who found ways

00:33:02.980 to meet their sexual requirements

00:33:04.660 or not

00:33:05.320 and not have a very high fertility rate.

00:33:07.340 I don't believe it was common

00:33:08.640 in the Roman Empire.

00:33:09.940 And I think the best historians

00:33:11.280 of Rome would agree

00:33:12.120 that it was an elite phenomenon

00:33:13.360 noticed by...

00:33:14.400 So, in terms of other places,

00:33:17.180 I mean, again,

00:33:18.000 people have controlled their fertility

00:33:19.800 through various practices.

00:33:21.060 Like, there was a lot of infant mortality.

00:33:24.060 As we've talked about,

00:33:25.000 that was natural.

00:33:25.580 But in terms of people

00:33:26.240 actually controlling it,

00:33:27.440 there's a lot of infanticide

00:33:28.540 in certain societies,

00:33:29.500 which was kept very quiet.

00:33:30.800 China, Japan.

00:33:32.760 There was the whole institution

00:33:35.940 of not marrying in the Catholic Church

00:33:37.520 and sending boys and girls

00:33:38.900 to nunneries and monasteries,

00:33:40.660 which was probably,

00:33:41.860 at its height,

00:33:42.740 statistically significant enough

00:33:44.120 to reduce fertility a bit.

00:33:47.160 There was late marriage,

00:33:48.840 and you do see a certain relationship

00:33:51.480 between the economy

00:33:52.340 and agriculture

00:33:53.140 and people getting married

00:33:54.820 and having children.

00:33:55.400 So, in a pre-modern society,

00:33:57.640 if you had a few bad harvests

00:33:59.200 and things were difficult,

00:34:00.140 people didn't get married,

00:34:01.360 that tended to delay fertility

00:34:02.880 because people mostly

00:34:04.240 have the children within marriage.

00:34:05.760 And then you had

00:34:06.740 a good series of harvests.

00:34:09.520 There was a bit more money around,

00:34:10.780 a bit more food around.

00:34:11.680 People got married a bit early.

00:34:12.700 The fertility rate went up.

00:34:14.260 So, there was some regulation.

00:34:15.960 But I don't believe

00:34:16.780 we've ever had a society

00:34:18.020 in the past

00:34:18.780 where we've kept

00:34:19.980 this number of people alive

00:34:21.280 into old age,

00:34:22.760 which, by the way,

00:34:23.320 I think is a wonderful thing

00:34:24.340 as I'm 60.

00:34:25.400 I'm hoping for another 20 or 30.

00:34:27.540 We haven't,

00:34:28.100 we've certainly never seen

00:34:29.440 something where we've got

00:34:30.220 that many people

00:34:30.900 at the top end.

00:34:31.960 And I do not believe

00:34:32.980 we've remotely seen

00:34:33.900 a society where we've had

00:34:35.220 fertility rates down

00:34:36.280 below one and a half

00:34:37.240 historically.

00:34:38.040 What we have seen historically

00:34:39.620 is the Black Death

00:34:41.840 or the Thirty Years' War.

00:34:43.340 And that cuts populations,

00:34:45.760 but it's tended to cut them

00:34:47.060 across the board.

00:34:48.100 Something like COVID,

00:34:48.980 you remember,

00:34:49.660 it was very much

00:34:50.220 the older population.

00:34:51.680 God forbid we should have

00:34:52.700 something that killed children,

00:34:53.960 something like that,

00:34:54.540 the culture,

00:34:55.000 then you could see it.

00:34:55.800 But historically,

00:34:56.320 I'm not aware

00:34:56.940 that we ever have.

00:34:57.880 So I honestly think

00:34:58.760 we have,

00:34:59.900 the traditional population

00:35:01.200 pyramid was like that.

00:35:03.120 And it wasn't always

00:35:04.900 exactly like that.

00:35:05.860 There might have been

00:35:06.360 a wall that particularly

00:35:07.200 took out a chunk

00:35:08.680 in the middle.

00:35:09.680 But I think,

00:35:10.820 essentially,

00:35:11.600 until modern times,

00:35:12.780 people haven't been able

00:35:13.440 to control their own

00:35:14.180 fertility sufficiently.

00:35:16.020 And people haven't

00:35:16.860 lived long enough,

00:35:17.880 been able to live,

00:35:18.500 life expectancy was too short.

00:35:19.700 So I think this is a completely

00:35:21.260 unprecedented scenario.

00:35:23.540 I think we are entering

00:35:24.720 uncharted waters,

00:35:25.960 and I'm quite concerned.

00:35:28.180 And the reason I ask about this

00:35:29.780 is it sort of sounds to me

00:35:30.920 like human beings

00:35:31.780 have never had this experience

00:35:33.040 before,

00:35:33.360 so we don't know,

00:35:34.100 we don't really know

00:35:35.080 exactly how to deal with it.

00:35:37.160 Would I be right in saying

00:35:38.420 that,

00:35:39.180 historically speaking,

00:35:40.760 every major civilization

00:35:42.000 would have seen

00:35:43.080 reproduction

00:35:44.320 and the expansion

00:35:45.800 of its population

00:35:46.800 as a good thing

00:35:47.860 to be sought,

00:35:50.200 frankly.

00:35:50.740 And, you know,

00:35:51.400 rulers would have wanted

00:35:52.540 to have a bigger manpower pool

00:35:55.240 to go to war

00:35:56.160 and so on and so forth.

00:35:57.680 Do you think

00:35:58.180 our attitude to children

00:35:59.980 is quite,

00:36:02.020 I was going to say unnatural,

00:36:04.260 but at least historically

00:36:05.300 atypical?

00:36:07.100 I think it's not

00:36:07.740 absolutely universal

00:36:08.840 what you're talking about,

00:36:09.960 but societies

00:36:10.720 and cultures

00:36:11.800 that didn't value

00:36:12.600 having children

00:36:13.280 didn't make it into history

00:36:14.620 or through history.

00:36:15.780 I mean,

00:36:15.960 you do have,

00:36:16.420 you know,

00:36:16.680 so for example,

00:36:17.460 yes,

00:36:17.720 the whole tradition

00:36:19.220 in Catholicism

00:36:20.280 of celibate priesthood,

00:36:23.360 celibate religious

00:36:25.120 and so on

00:36:26.100 reduced fertility rates.

00:36:28.320 On the other hand,

00:36:29.100 within marriage,

00:36:30.660 fertility was encouraged.

00:36:33.300 Certainly,

00:36:33.880 as you get to the sort of

00:36:34.740 mercantilist period

00:36:35.720 where,

00:36:36.460 well,

00:36:36.740 you go back to

00:36:37.640 Ibn Khaldun,

00:36:38.500 you go back to the Arab writers,

00:36:40.020 you look at the history

00:36:41.020 of writing on this subject,

00:36:42.100 but particularly

00:36:42.560 into the 18th century

00:36:44.100 when you had mercantilists

00:36:45.380 who wanted to grow

00:36:46.880 their national populations,

00:36:48.840 accumulate gold

00:36:49.800 and be able to fight wars.

00:36:51.720 It was obvious

00:36:52.560 that large numbers of people

00:36:53.560 were a good thing.

00:36:55.580 So,

00:36:56.180 I don't think you've had

00:36:57.100 a really

00:36:57.620 antenatal

00:36:58.780 civilisation

00:37:00.300 or society

00:37:00.960 that's succeeded

00:37:02.080 and where you've got

00:37:03.020 those kind of

00:37:03.720 antenatal,

00:37:05.140 I mean,

00:37:05.540 the shakers

00:37:06.000 in the United States

00:37:06.880 are a famous case.

00:37:07.640 They didn't believe

00:37:08.180 in having any children

00:37:09.400 and they,

00:37:10.660 surprise,

00:37:10.980 surprise,

00:37:11.260 have died out.

00:37:11.860 So,

00:37:12.000 there's almost

00:37:12.320 a kind of

00:37:12.780 Darwinistic process

00:37:13.920 at work

00:37:14.580 and to some extent,

00:37:16.620 particularly where you've got

00:37:17.300 high rates of mortality

00:37:18.460 and lots of people

00:37:19.080 are dying off,

00:37:19.960 if you don't have

00:37:20.500 a pronatal culture,

00:37:21.620 if the average isn't

00:37:22.360 sort of five or six

00:37:23.200 children per woman,

00:37:24.260 you're not going to make

00:37:25.080 it as a society.

00:37:26.200 So,

00:37:26.580 I think it is

00:37:27.440 unprecedented

00:37:28.020 and yes,

00:37:30.420 there is something

00:37:30.900 about modernity

00:37:32.000 which is anti-children.

00:37:33.560 Now,

00:37:33.800 you might say,

00:37:34.580 oh,

00:37:34.760 is that really the case?

00:37:35.820 It's not as pro-child

00:37:37.240 as it should be

00:37:38.140 and maybe in the past

00:37:39.880 where people

00:37:40.340 haven't been able

00:37:40.840 to control their fertility

00:37:41.840 that well,

00:37:42.940 you didn't need

00:37:43.580 a pronatal culture.

00:37:45.080 So,

00:37:45.520 I'm not saying

00:37:46.060 we need to go back

00:37:46.720 to the past

00:37:47.140 because they had

00:37:47.560 a pronatal culture

00:37:48.300 and that's why

00:37:48.780 they had lots of children.

00:37:50.000 They had lots of children

00:37:50.800 partly for the reasons

00:37:51.840 we've said,

00:37:52.380 but there was a kind

00:37:52.980 of Darwinistic sense

00:37:54.080 if societies didn't

00:37:55.300 have them,

00:37:55.720 they'd die out,

00:37:56.380 which instilled

00:37:57.020 a certain culture

00:37:57.820 but just worked

00:37:58.500 through history.

00:38:00.040 But I think

00:38:00.640 the lack of ability

00:38:01.440 to control it

00:38:02.440 meant you didn't

00:38:03.400 really need

00:38:03.860 a pronatal culture.

00:38:04.900 Now,

00:38:05.060 then you get

00:38:05.560 to the kind

00:38:06.060 of 70s and 80s,

00:38:07.240 when contraception

00:38:09.800 was very,

00:38:10.340 very common.

00:38:10.840 I mean,

00:38:10.960 it was really coming

00:38:11.740 in from the late

00:38:12.400 19th century

00:38:13.040 but it became

00:38:13.720 really universal

00:38:14.720 and available

00:38:15.700 in the developed world.

00:38:17.500 And at first,

00:38:18.380 it's interesting,

00:38:19.340 fertility rate

00:38:19.900 didn't fall off a cliff.

00:38:20.980 It went below

00:38:21.440 replacement but not

00:38:22.200 very much.

00:38:23.300 But I think

00:38:23.780 for my generation

00:38:24.560 there was still

00:38:24.980 very much

00:38:25.380 an unspoken expectation,

00:38:27.060 an unspoken norm.

00:38:28.440 You got married

00:38:29.020 in your 20s

00:38:29.720 and started having

00:38:30.320 your family then

00:38:31.160 and that's what I saw

00:38:32.380 most of my friends doing,

00:38:33.760 you know,

00:38:34.020 reasonably well-educated people,

00:38:35.560 people who'd been

00:38:36.040 to good universities

00:38:37.200 or not.

00:38:37.920 It didn't really matter.

00:38:38.760 That's what you got on

00:38:39.620 and did and you might

00:38:40.640 have had two or three

00:38:41.540 and that was.

00:38:42.120 And I think it was

00:38:42.820 kind of unthinking

00:38:43.660 in a way.

00:38:44.240 It was very much

00:38:44.860 how we were,

00:38:46.200 I wouldn't say

00:38:46.660 programmed,

00:38:47.780 but that was the atmosphere,

00:38:49.000 that was the environment

00:38:49.660 at the time.

00:38:50.300 I think we're now

00:38:51.020 in a world of

00:38:51.600 hyper-individualism,

00:38:53.360 hyper-self-actualization

00:38:54.940 and that's not

00:38:56.220 and that's not

00:38:56.240 altogether bad.

00:38:57.080 I don't want

00:38:57.460 again to stand

00:38:58.240 on a pulpit

00:38:58.760 and say,

00:38:59.160 oh,

00:38:59.340 you must be

00:38:59.820 more collective,

00:39:00.600 you must think

00:39:01.100 about the country.

00:39:02.260 But if we don't

00:39:03.280 have some kind

00:39:04.080 of countervailing

00:39:05.520 ideology,

00:39:06.700 we don't have

00:39:07.180 some kind

00:39:07.680 of countervailing

00:39:08.280 belief,

00:39:09.280 call it

00:39:09.840 neopronatalism.

00:39:11.280 So in the natural state

00:39:12.400 people were

00:39:12.940 naturally pronatal.

00:39:14.260 Now we need

00:39:14.820 to reinvent

00:39:15.400 that pronatalism

00:39:16.580 to push against

00:39:17.600 all the exciting

00:39:18.420 other things

00:39:19.080 people could be

00:39:19.660 doing with their lives.

00:39:21.100 You know,

00:39:21.320 you talk about

00:39:22.040 ideology and it

00:39:23.220 brought to mind

00:39:23.780 the memory I had

00:39:24.620 when I was in

00:39:25.920 New York,

00:39:26.180 I was in Greenwich

00:39:26.660 Village and I was

00:39:27.420 in a coffee shop

00:39:28.060 and I started

00:39:28.460 talking to this

00:39:29.300 older gentleman

00:39:30.520 in his 80s

00:39:31.400 and we started

00:39:32.020 having a really

00:39:32.460 lovely conversation

00:39:33.300 and he said

00:39:34.400 he had children.

00:39:35.180 I went,

00:39:35.420 oh,

00:39:35.580 do you have

00:39:35.820 grandchildren?

00:39:36.660 And this really

00:39:37.660 sad look came

00:39:38.780 across his face

00:39:39.660 when he went,

00:39:40.680 no,

00:39:40.940 my children are

00:39:42.180 worried about

00:39:42.780 the environment

00:39:43.500 and they think

00:39:44.240 having grandchildren

00:39:45.140 is selfish

00:39:45.900 because it would

00:39:47.220 damage the planet

00:39:48.620 and the globe

00:39:49.300 and global warming.

00:39:50.540 I mean,

00:39:51.180 how big a factor

00:39:52.180 does that play

00:39:53.060 into it?

00:39:53.540 The fact,

00:39:54.500 not only that,

00:39:55.720 but this idea

00:39:56.640 that the human being

00:39:57.840 is a scourge

00:39:58.740 upon the earth,

00:39:59.780 that all we do

00:40:00.800 is drain resources,

00:40:02.180 that we are toxic,

00:40:03.380 to quote Bill Hicks,

00:40:04.340 we're a virus

00:40:04.960 with shoes.

00:40:06.440 How much does that

00:40:07.600 play into people

00:40:08.880 not wanting to have

00:40:10.200 babies and children?

00:40:12.040 It's quite hard

00:40:12.720 to quantify,

00:40:13.380 although there are

00:40:13.980 studies that show

00:40:14.760 quite a lot of

00:40:15.320 young people today

00:40:16.300 are worried

00:40:17.220 about this issue

00:40:18.120 and that it plays

00:40:20.280 into the low

00:40:21.200 fertility rates.

00:40:22.000 I can't put my

00:40:22.680 finger on it

00:40:23.180 and say that's

00:40:23.760 X percent of the

00:40:24.660 problem,

00:40:25.380 but undoubtedly

00:40:26.300 it is a part

00:40:26.900 of the problem

00:40:27.340 and so we need

00:40:28.320 an array of

00:40:28.860 arguments against it.

00:40:29.980 So let me give

00:40:31.040 you my best shot

00:40:32.720 at, in fact,

00:40:33.500 there's a chapter

00:40:34.360 in my book

00:40:34.840 about why this

00:40:36.580 is wrong

00:40:37.340 and pernicious.

00:40:38.100 So first of all,

00:40:39.600 a child born today,

00:40:41.580 if we believe

00:40:42.560 the progress

00:40:44.160 of net zero

00:40:44.940 technology,

00:40:45.900 will not emit

00:40:46.640 very much.

00:40:47.240 A small child

00:40:47.900 doesn't actually

00:40:48.420 create that much

00:40:49.120 emissions.

00:40:49.800 By the time

00:40:50.520 he or she is 20,

00:40:51.740 25,

00:40:52.380 living in his

00:40:52.940 old home place,

00:40:54.200 driving a vehicle,

00:40:55.500 we will be pretty

00:40:56.360 close to net zero.

00:40:57.100 And if you actually

00:40:57.580 look at the progress

00:40:58.380 Britain has made

00:40:59.080 in reducing carbon

00:40:59.900 emissions,

00:41:00.960 maybe a bit phony

00:41:02.360 because of the way

00:41:03.040 we import and so on,

00:41:04.400 you could certainly

00:41:05.160 see in 20 years' time

00:41:06.340 a child born today

00:41:07.200 won't have that much

00:41:07.940 impact.

00:41:08.260 So that's kind of

00:41:08.840 argument number one.

00:41:10.140 Argument number two

00:41:11.100 is that in order to

00:41:13.160 progress as a human

00:41:14.800 species and as a planet,

00:41:16.260 we need lots of

00:41:17.140 young created minds.

00:41:18.480 So the planet,

00:41:19.600 the technology that

00:41:20.800 existed in 1900

00:41:22.080 could no way support

00:41:23.800 8 billion people,

00:41:24.740 right?

00:41:25.440 We are now 8 billion

00:41:26.680 people,

00:41:27.240 better fed,

00:41:28.380 better educated,

00:41:29.520 better housed,

00:41:30.400 better clothed,

00:41:31.500 better health,

00:41:32.320 living longer

00:41:33.160 than we ever have done.

00:41:35.060 That's only because

00:41:35.840 we've got new

00:41:36.380 technology.

00:41:36.880 Now the population

00:41:38.180 is at least going

00:41:39.000 to top out.

00:41:39.860 If we can carry on

00:41:40.780 with that creative

00:41:41.640 endeavour,

00:41:42.900 we will solve our

00:41:44.880 environmental problems.

00:41:45.940 A country like India

00:41:46.700 getting wealthier and

00:41:47.540 wealthier now has the

00:41:48.640 space for more tigers

00:41:49.960 and the tiger population

00:41:50.900 is taking off.

00:41:51.760 It wouldn't be if it

00:41:52.700 weren't an inventive,

00:41:53.680 creative and increasingly

00:41:54.680 wealthy society.

00:41:55.680 Still poor,

00:41:56.460 but it's at a level

00:41:57.280 that it can think about

00:41:58.140 the environment.

00:41:59.040 A country like Japan,

00:42:00.260 not enough young people,

00:42:01.540 less and less inventiveness.

00:42:02.560 So to come up with

00:42:03.680 the environmental

00:42:04.180 solutions,

00:42:05.860 we need technological

00:42:06.620 solutions.

00:42:07.320 Those will be produced

00:42:08.000 by young people.

00:42:09.120 Aging societies will

00:42:10.100 not produce them.

00:42:11.240 So that's argument

00:42:11.800 number two.

00:42:13.100 Argument number three

00:42:14.360 is that if you are

00:42:17.080 a person who lives

00:42:21.160 in the real world

00:42:22.080 who says,

00:42:22.600 I'm not going to have

00:42:23.080 children because I want

00:42:24.260 to save the planet,

00:42:25.260 but I expect there to be

00:42:26.380 a bus driver when I get

00:42:27.340 a bus,

00:42:27.940 I expect someone to

00:42:28.760 clear my bins

00:42:29.980 once a week.

00:42:31.360 I expect someone

00:42:32.160 in the restaurant

00:42:32.800 to take my order

00:42:34.080 or prepare my food.

00:42:36.220 When I'm old,

00:42:36.960 I expect to have

00:42:37.540 a care of them.

00:42:38.060 In other words,

00:42:38.500 you continue to consume

00:42:39.800 the labour of others,

00:42:41.040 but you are not,

00:42:42.040 you're too grand

00:42:42.660 to produce it

00:42:43.460 or too environmental

00:42:44.340 or too green

00:42:45.280 or too worthy.

00:42:46.660 All you will do

00:42:47.720 is you'll either find

00:42:48.920 that labour's not there

00:42:49.940 for you,

00:42:50.740 or you'll suck

00:42:51.680 into your country

00:42:52.640 a lot of immigrants

00:42:54.160 from very low emissions

00:42:55.240 countries.

00:42:55.720 Now we may get to talk

00:42:56.660 about immigration,

00:42:57.380 that's a whole different

00:42:58.040 argument,

00:42:58.720 but just in terms

00:42:59.640 of the environment,

00:43:00.360 if you are taking

00:43:01.100 someone from the

00:43:02.320 Democratic Republic

00:43:03.280 of Congo

00:43:03.860 to do the jobs

00:43:05.180 for you in Britain,

00:43:06.400 or from Syria

00:43:07.500 to do the jobs

00:43:08.260 for you in Germany,

00:43:09.100 or from Guatemala

00:43:09.960 for the States,

00:43:11.120 these people,

00:43:11.860 when they come

00:43:12.440 and they aspire

00:43:13.500 to a local lifestyle,

00:43:14.580 even if they remain

00:43:15.340 relatively poor,

00:43:16.680 relative to the country

00:43:17.840 they've arrived in,

00:43:19.040 their emissions

00:43:19.740 can go up 50,

00:43:20.660 60 times.

00:43:21.760 So you are not

00:43:22.380 saving the planet

00:43:23.200 by,

00:43:24.020 unless you go and live

00:43:24.940 on the blasted heath

00:43:25.980 and sort of,

00:43:26.720 I don't know,

00:43:27.460 chew berries or something,

00:43:28.560 you are not

00:43:29.560 saving the planet,

00:43:30.440 you are merely

00:43:31.020 shifting people

00:43:31.800 to meet your

00:43:32.460 consumer requirements

00:43:34.040 from low emissions

00:43:35.260 to high emissions

00:43:35.920 countries.

00:43:36.880 So I hope those

00:43:37.800 three arguments

00:43:38.400 are at least part

00:43:39.380 of a riposte

00:43:40.060 to someone who thinks,

00:43:41.020 I won't have children

00:43:41.800 and I'll save the planet.

00:43:42.660 We'll get you back

00:43:44.380 to the interview

00:43:45.080 in a minute,

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00:44:56.760 And now,

00:44:57.800 back to the interview.

00:44:59.980 We always focus

00:45:01.600 with these conversations

00:45:02.860 on women,

00:45:03.860 as well we should

00:45:04.520 because it's their fault,

00:45:05.600 but actually

00:45:07.400 we need to talk

00:45:08.180 about the men in this.

00:45:08.880 So I'm going to,

00:45:09.820 I know a lot of women

00:45:12.000 who are my age,

00:45:13.140 a little bit younger,

00:45:13.980 and they get into

00:45:15.800 relationships with men

00:45:17.120 and they get promised

00:45:18.900 that children,

00:45:19.880 whatever else,

00:45:20.540 and all of a sudden

00:45:20.960 the man turns around

00:45:21.840 and says,

00:45:22.200 actually,

00:45:22.560 I don't want to have kids.

00:45:24.120 That's it.

00:45:25.380 And then what you

00:45:26.300 normally see

00:45:27.160 is in the woman

00:45:27.980 using her most fertile years

00:45:29.880 on a man who

00:45:30.800 has essentially

00:45:32.080 sold her a lie.

00:45:33.440 Now,

00:45:33.660 I don't think

00:45:34.300 that's the case

00:45:34.980 for every woman,

00:45:35.540 of course not,

00:45:36.060 but how much of this

00:45:37.020 is an issue

00:45:37.740 with men

00:45:38.940 and men not wanting

00:45:40.340 to have children?

00:45:41.780 It is an issue

00:45:42.340 with men,

00:45:42.900 although men say

00:45:43.940 they want to have

00:45:44.820 roughly the same number

00:45:45.820 of children

00:45:46.540 as women do.

00:45:47.700 So both men and women

00:45:49.080 in Britain

00:45:49.720 and the States

00:45:50.480 and a lot of other

00:45:51.180 developed countries

00:45:51.860 say they want to have

00:45:52.780 two to three.

00:45:53.780 The difference

00:45:54.440 between men and women

00:45:55.320 is that women feel

00:45:56.180 the clock ticking

00:45:57.260 more intensely.

00:45:58.500 But it isn't really

00:45:59.740 ticking more intensely.

00:46:00.840 So I think

00:46:01.180 better education

00:46:02.120 for women

00:46:02.660 in terms of

00:46:03.320 their loss of fertility

00:46:04.400 in their 30s

00:46:05.320 would help,

00:46:06.180 make them a little

00:46:06.980 more urgent

00:46:07.620 and a little

00:46:08.020 more pressing.

00:46:09.600 But also men

00:46:10.780 should understand that

00:46:11.680 because most men

00:46:13.660 will not manage

00:46:15.600 to secure a partner

00:46:17.120 of fertile years

00:46:18.460 years and years later.

00:46:20.960 I mean,

00:46:21.300 we always have examples

00:46:22.300 of some 80-year-old

00:46:23.220 who's married

00:46:23.600 a 20-year-old,

00:46:24.480 you know.

00:46:24.800 But unless you're

00:46:25.600 a tech billionaire

00:46:26.640 or a film star,

00:46:28.920 it's probably

00:46:29.560 not going to happen.

00:46:30.240 Or a podcast host

00:46:31.220 he hasn't secured

00:46:32.760 a woman of fertile years.

00:46:34.060 and knocked her up.

00:46:35.540 A real superstar

00:46:36.580 podcaster,

00:46:37.480 perhaps.

00:46:39.140 But generally,

00:46:40.600 it won't happen

00:46:41.220 for you either.

00:46:41.980 Now,

00:46:42.120 I think men just don't...

00:46:43.020 It's all right, mate.

00:46:43.660 Men don't have that

00:46:45.440 sense of urgency.

00:46:46.740 So I think

00:46:47.520 educating both sexes

00:46:49.100 on the decline

00:46:50.120 of female fertility,

00:46:51.980 educating them

00:46:52.640 on the sheer likelihood

00:46:54.160 of a man

00:46:55.420 securing a woman

00:46:56.820 of fertile years

00:46:58.040 as a partner

00:46:58.800 once he's past

00:47:00.200 a certain age.

00:47:00.900 So give us the stats

00:47:01.700 on both of those.

00:47:02.980 Okay.

00:47:03.340 So the men

00:47:05.940 securing a partner

00:47:06.940 of fertile years,

00:47:08.140 I can't give you

00:47:08.780 the stats on.

00:47:09.560 But I do know

00:47:10.340 that the age gap

00:47:11.760 between partners

00:47:13.280 has declined

00:47:13.980 significantly.

00:47:14.680 So my parents

00:47:15.640 were 11 years apart.

00:47:17.400 I've got a good friend

00:47:18.380 whose parents

00:47:18.980 were 22 years apart.

00:47:20.420 That wasn't that...

00:47:21.180 I mean,

00:47:21.640 22 is a bit of an exaggeration.

00:47:23.880 It was much more common

00:47:25.060 when my parents

00:47:26.060 were young.

00:47:26.940 They didn't go

00:47:27.420 to university.

00:47:28.760 The men

00:47:29.340 found jobs

00:47:30.440 and got to a sort

00:47:31.360 of level

00:47:31.760 maybe in their

00:47:32.340 mid-twenties

00:47:33.040 or late-twenties

00:47:33.920 when they could

00:47:34.680 have a family

00:47:35.900 and could afford it.

00:47:37.160 And then they very often

00:47:37.920 married younger women.

00:47:39.400 In our generation

00:47:40.320 or my generation

00:47:41.320 and your generation,

00:47:42.620 people are more likely

00:47:43.280 to meet at university.

00:47:45.160 And therefore,

00:47:46.040 I'm sure the data

00:47:47.000 would show,

00:47:47.600 or I imagine

00:47:48.140 the data would show,

00:47:49.240 that the actual age

00:47:50.720 of partnering...

00:47:53.100 So if you just take,

00:47:53.860 say,

00:47:54.320 first child born,

00:47:56.160 what's the age gap

00:47:56.960 between the parents?

00:47:57.820 It would decline,

00:47:58.860 I imagine.

00:48:00.180 But I don't have

00:48:01.100 the data on that.

00:48:02.840 On women's fertility,

00:48:04.380 the fact is that,

00:48:05.540 I mean,

00:48:05.720 as we were talking beforehand,

00:48:06.960 you get the odd case

00:48:07.940 of people having children

00:48:09.060 very late.

00:48:10.200 The dentist I married,

00:48:11.580 I mentioned

00:48:12.280 the dentist,

00:48:13.200 the dentist I mentioned earlier

00:48:15.040 had three children

00:48:16.920 and then his wife

00:48:18.500 had another child

00:48:19.200 in her 50s.

00:48:20.420 Unexpected,

00:48:21.140 and everyone was delighted.

00:48:22.540 Early 50s.

00:48:23.460 So these sorts of things

00:48:24.540 do happen.

00:48:25.380 But again,

00:48:25.920 they're rogue events.

00:48:26.960 And one shouldn't rely on them.

00:48:28.560 The fact is that

00:48:29.540 fertility probably peaks

00:48:30.920 in your early 20s,

00:48:32.200 but you don't really have

00:48:33.580 to start worrying about it

00:48:34.700 for most people

00:48:35.600 until you're into your 30s.

00:48:38.320 But between 30 and 35,

00:48:40.240 there is a considerable drop-off.

00:48:41.700 So the 30s

00:48:42.540 are a critical period.

00:48:44.320 Once you're past 35,

00:48:45.560 the chances of you

00:48:46.560 having a problem

00:48:47.500 are greater and greater.

00:48:49.280 So, you know,

00:48:49.680 there is a curve.

00:48:51.140 It could be taught in schools.

00:48:53.240 And I think people

00:48:54.860 are deluded

00:48:55.940 thinking they can put it

00:48:57.160 off and off.

00:48:57.860 So you'll never get rid

00:48:59.220 of that problem

00:48:59.880 of the man

00:49:00.460 who messes the girl around

00:49:01.720 and says he doesn't want

00:49:02.680 any children

00:49:03.220 and then goes on

00:49:05.480 to somebody else.

00:49:06.320 But I think if everybody

00:49:07.500 understood

00:49:08.140 the numbers

00:49:10.280 and the pace

00:49:12.580 at which the clock

00:49:13.280 is ticking,

00:49:14.400 and if we had a culture

00:49:15.440 that was more pro-natal,

00:49:16.860 that gave more credit

00:49:17.980 and more status

00:49:18.920 and more value

00:49:22.100 to parenthood

00:49:23.800 and to young dads,

00:49:25.980 say,

00:49:26.840 we could shift it.

00:49:28.480 I don't think we'll shift it

00:49:29.420 by me sitting on a podcast

00:49:30.600 preaching at young men

00:49:32.720 to commit.

00:49:35.300 But I think we need

00:49:36.440 a change in the environment

00:49:37.500 where that kind of commitment

00:49:38.800 is more natural

00:49:40.380 and more normal

00:49:41.460 because men want to have kids

00:49:43.060 and be dads

00:49:43.740 at a younger age.

00:49:44.600 I think it's a very important point,

00:49:46.560 the education.

00:49:47.440 And this particularly

00:49:48.120 goes for women

00:49:48.960 because when you talk

00:49:51.280 to a lot of women

00:49:52.220 about having kids,

00:49:53.640 they go,

00:49:53.980 well, I'm going to leave it

00:49:54.700 until, you know,

00:49:55.420 37, 38.

00:49:57.560 And I go,

00:49:59.060 you,

00:49:59.860 I mean,

00:50:00.800 if you can have them.

00:50:02.200 There's some women

00:50:02.920 who can't get pregnant

00:50:04.780 past a certain age,

00:50:06.720 early 30s

00:50:07.460 or whatever else.

00:50:08.440 So the idea

00:50:09.100 that you can put it off

00:50:09.960 and put it off

00:50:10.740 might be a fantasy

00:50:13.700 for some people.

00:50:15.160 I think the other thing

00:50:15.860 is the technology.

00:50:16.940 So IVF has got better

00:50:18.240 and better,

00:50:18.800 but it's still not fail-proof.

00:50:21.480 It's still less and less effective

00:50:23.520 the later you leave it.

00:50:25.180 It's still more and more expensive

00:50:26.960 and it's not a pleasant

00:50:29.180 or easy procedure.

00:50:30.140 I mean, fortunately,

00:50:30.740 I haven't been through it

00:50:31.500 and my wife hasn't been through it,

00:50:32.820 but it's not something you should,

00:50:34.180 so I think it will extend the window

00:50:35.740 and that's good.

00:50:37.060 But I think the worry

00:50:37.980 is that people come to rely on it.

00:50:39.580 Oh, I've frozen my eggs.

00:50:40.680 There's IVF.

00:50:41.660 I'm fine.

00:50:42.420 I don't have to worry about it.

00:50:43.580 And as a friend of mine said to me,

00:50:48.900 who's quite involved in this world

00:50:50.680 and who's senior in the body

00:50:54.520 that regulates these things in the UK,

00:50:57.760 when we were...

00:50:58.240 She had four children in her 20s

00:51:00.280 and then got serious about her career.

00:51:02.220 She said,

00:51:02.700 when we were first married,

00:51:05.920 you know,

00:51:06.200 we could try for children

00:51:07.900 in every menstrual cycle

00:51:09.380 with a reasonable chance of success.

00:51:12.040 The shots you get with IVF

00:51:14.220 are far fewer.

00:51:15.800 They're more complicated,

00:51:17.240 difficult, painful,

00:51:18.100 and it's not something

00:51:19.760 you should rely on.

00:51:21.100 No, absolutely.

00:51:21.900 And the chances of you being able

00:51:23.920 to bring a baby to term

00:51:25.620 in your late 30s

00:51:27.080 are obviously vastly different

00:51:28.960 to if you're in your early 20s,

00:51:31.160 for example.

00:51:31.780 The other thing I would say

00:51:32.800 is we had our children,

00:51:33.900 and again,

00:51:34.260 I'm not saying,

00:51:34.880 oh, I did the perfect thing,

00:51:36.000 everyone should follow me.

00:51:37.620 We had our children

00:51:38.680 in our late 20s and early 30s,

00:51:40.560 and we had a lot of energy

00:51:42.220 in those days,

00:51:42.980 and we got a lot of parental help.

00:51:45.220 Now,

00:51:45.720 when we're looking after

00:51:46.400 our grandchildren,

00:51:47.380 I mean,

00:51:47.560 it's one of the greatest joys in life,

00:51:49.700 but it's quite tiring,

00:51:51.140 and I think the later you leave it,

00:51:52.820 the harder it is to do.

00:51:54.420 The other thing is

00:51:55.180 if the generations

00:51:55.840 get very spaced out.

00:51:57.220 If you're in your early 40s

00:51:58.960 looking after a newborn,

00:52:00.560 you're very likely to have parents

00:52:01.960 who need quite a lot of help.

00:52:03.600 So the more spread out

00:52:04.540 the generations are,

00:52:05.540 the more stress you put on

00:52:06.960 that middle generation

00:52:08.560 that is having to deal

00:52:09.460 with elderly parents

00:52:10.580 as well as children.

00:52:11.780 One of the things in China

00:52:12.780 that is said to be a problem

00:52:14.100 is there are so many

00:52:15.440 only children,

00:52:16.740 because of the one-child policy,

00:52:18.560 marrying each other.

00:52:20.240 They then have four parents

00:52:22.400 with no support

00:52:25.460 other than those children.

00:52:26.920 I mean,

00:52:27.040 I've got a 91-year-old mother,

00:52:29.580 and she's amazing and wonderful,

00:52:31.240 but she does require

00:52:32.220 a bit of support.

00:52:32.920 She's got two children,

00:52:33.860 not just me.

00:52:34.640 She's got seven grandchildren,

00:52:36.200 and we all rally around,

00:52:37.480 and it's quite doable.

00:52:38.360 But if you're in your 40s

00:52:39.860 and you had a parent

00:52:41.440 who was in his or her 40s

00:52:43.120 and you were an only child

00:52:44.580 and your wife or husband

00:52:46.360 was in the same position,

00:52:48.480 the prospect,

00:52:49.420 the effort,

00:52:50.040 taking them to hospital,

00:52:51.600 looking after them,

00:52:52.980 all the things you need to do

00:52:54.180 with older people

00:52:55.520 that a good child should do

00:52:56.860 makes it even more...

00:52:58.140 And of course,

00:52:58.500 at that age,

00:52:59.160 the grandparents can't help.

00:53:00.400 It just makes the whole thing

00:53:02.240 impossible, frankly.

00:53:03.400 All right, Paul.

00:53:03.780 Well, let's talk about

00:53:04.620 how we're going to get ourselves

00:53:05.600 out of this

00:53:06.040 because I think it's important

00:53:08.360 to address.

00:53:09.260 So there are countries

00:53:11.060 which have attempted

00:53:12.080 to address this.

00:53:14.220 My understanding is

00:53:15.540 none of them have been successful.

00:53:16.740 Is that correct?

00:53:17.440 No.

00:53:18.580 That's incorrect.

00:53:19.620 It's incorrect

00:53:20.400 because you never really know

00:53:21.860 what the counterfactual is.

00:53:23.200 So take a country like Hungary.

00:53:24.760 Hungary...

00:53:25.260 OK, let me rephrase then

00:53:26.300 because I think it's important.

00:53:27.700 What I mean by

00:53:28.520 they haven't been successful

00:53:29.920 is we want to get to 2.1,

00:53:32.760 they haven't got to 2.1

00:53:34.380 and they haven't made

00:53:35.240 huge progress in that direction.

00:53:36.680 There have been

00:53:37.060 a small number of cases.

00:53:38.300 Tell us.

00:53:38.640 So Georgia is a good case

00:53:40.000 where famously

00:53:40.880 the head of the church said

00:53:42.140 any third child

00:53:43.480 or a child in succession

00:53:45.080 more than number three,

00:53:46.220 I will personally baptize.

00:53:48.340 And that seems to have

00:53:49.240 an extraordinary effect.

00:53:50.260 I mean, how long lasting it is,

00:53:51.580 I don't know,

00:53:52.160 but it does seem to have ticked

00:53:53.600 the fertility rate

00:53:54.760 back up above 2.

00:53:58.260 And Mongolia, Kazakhstan,

00:54:00.480 I mean, these are quite...

00:54:02.360 I'd say it's obscure

00:54:03.260 as, of course,

00:54:03.640 a very Anglo-centric view

00:54:05.320 of the world,

00:54:05.660 but these aren't countries

00:54:06.380 we know much about.

00:54:07.520 But they have succeeded

00:54:08.560 through a number of means

00:54:09.880 in raising their fertility rate.

00:54:11.740 And a country like Hungary,

00:54:13.340 where they still have

00:54:14.240 a well below

00:54:15.420 replacement fertility rate,

00:54:16.880 has brought the

00:54:17.460 fertility rate up.

00:54:19.000 Now, there are

00:54:19.820 technical reasons for that.

00:54:20.960 When you...

00:54:22.120 The way that the total

00:54:23.000 fertility rate is calculated,

00:54:24.240 I won't bore you

00:54:24.720 with the details,

00:54:25.400 but as people delay

00:54:26.360 having children,

00:54:27.400 as the average age

00:54:28.200 of having a child

00:54:28.960 gets later and later,

00:54:30.400 it somewhat depresses

00:54:31.480 the fertility rate.

00:54:32.360 And then when that stops,

00:54:33.360 just stopping it

00:54:34.320 means the fertility rate

00:54:35.600 tends to go up.

00:54:36.500 So part of that

00:54:37.260 is there in Hungary.

00:54:38.220 But the fact is,

00:54:39.280 if Hungary had not gone up

00:54:40.960 from 1.1, 1.2

00:54:42.460 to 1.5, 1.6,

00:54:45.120 it's not a replacement.

00:54:46.660 But replacement's not

00:54:47.660 the magic number.

00:54:48.580 It's great to be there,

00:54:49.600 but it's a hell of a lot

00:54:50.740 better to be 1.5

00:54:51.960 than 1.1

00:54:52.780 in terms of how fast

00:54:54.160 you age

00:54:54.680 and what kind of support

00:54:56.320 you're going to have to give

00:54:57.140 to the elderly

00:54:57.740 versus the working age population.

00:55:00.040 So clearly,

00:55:01.120 countries have tried

00:55:02.860 all sorts of things.

00:55:03.960 There's no really easy way

00:55:05.740 of knowing

00:55:06.720 what succeeded

00:55:07.700 and what hasn't

00:55:08.420 and what the counterfactuals are

00:55:09.940 and what might have happened

00:55:11.120 if they hadn't had

00:55:11.800 those policies.

00:55:13.180 Let me give you

00:55:13.720 the example of France.

00:55:15.220 France became very aware

00:55:16.680 of its lack of fertility

00:55:18.560 a very long time ago.

00:55:20.160 The French,

00:55:20.680 for some reason,

00:55:21.360 it's still a bit of a mystery,

00:55:23.140 managed to get

00:55:23.860 their fertility rate down

00:55:24.900 very, very early.

00:55:26.340 I'm talking about

00:55:27.020 the end of the 18th century.

00:55:28.880 And I talk a lot about this

00:55:31.060 in my book,

00:55:31.680 The Human Tide.

00:55:32.420 Because France ceased

00:55:33.420 to be the demographic

00:55:34.440 superpower of Europe,

00:55:36.080 it lost a lot of wars

00:55:37.660 eventually

00:55:38.120 and became very second fiddle

00:55:40.180 to the United Kingdom.

00:55:41.460 And the point where

00:55:43.800 France really got this

00:55:45.360 was 1870, 1871.

00:55:47.400 They lost the Franco-Prussian War.

00:55:49.240 They were outgunned,

00:55:50.080 they were outorganized,

00:55:50.740 but they were also outnumbered

00:55:51.600 by the Germans,

00:55:52.860 the Prussians

00:55:53.380 and their German allies.

00:55:54.860 And France became

00:55:55.840 a bit obsessed

00:55:56.520 by pronatalism.

00:55:57.960 Now, what happened

00:55:59.060 is they didn't really

00:55:59.740 get their birth rate up,

00:56:00.760 but eventually Germany

00:56:01.640 and England

00:56:02.080 had a birth rate that fell.

00:56:04.380 And France has had

00:56:06.140 a persistently higher

00:56:07.580 fertility rate

00:56:08.620 than other countries

00:56:10.420 in Western Europe.

00:56:11.080 It's still below replacement,

00:56:12.800 but it's doing much better

00:56:14.060 than other parts

00:56:15.140 of Western Europe.

00:56:15.840 And the reason for that

00:56:16.620 is it had a long tradition

00:56:18.060 of pronatalism.

00:56:19.580 So when Macron says

00:56:20.920 demographic rearmament,

00:56:23.040 no one thinks he's weird

00:56:24.340 as they would

00:56:25.260 if Keir Starmer said it.

00:56:27.380 And what they actually do,

00:56:28.860 and we can maybe get

00:56:29.540 into the details of policy,

00:56:31.000 is, for example,

00:56:33.140 the tax system

00:56:34.320 is much better

00:56:35.060 the more children

00:56:35.680 you have in France

00:56:36.460 and in other countries

00:56:38.020 in Western Europe.

00:56:38.660 And actually,

00:56:39.060 if you look at France,

00:56:40.140 you could say,

00:56:40.700 well, is it really

00:56:41.680 government policy?

00:56:42.480 And so I spend a lot

00:56:43.740 of time in a part

00:56:45.060 of the world

00:56:45.420 most people don't know

00:56:46.320 exists,

00:56:46.880 which is French Catalonia.

00:56:48.520 So Northern Catalonia

00:56:49.460 is actually in France.

00:56:50.480 It's the Department

00:56:51.500 of the Pyrénées Orientales.

00:56:53.120 And it's very Catalan.

00:56:54.700 But if you compare

00:56:55.360 the fertility rate there

00:56:56.640 to the fertility rate

00:56:57.780 in Catalan,

00:56:58.980 in Spanish Catalonia,

00:57:00.400 you'll find quite a gap.

00:57:02.020 So it's not about

00:57:02.820 Catalan culture.

00:57:04.280 It actually must be,

00:57:05.660 it's kind of an experiment.

00:57:06.580 It's about government policy.

00:57:08.320 And the thing about

00:57:08.940 prenatal policy

00:57:09.780 is there's no single

00:57:11.560 silver bullet.

00:57:12.220 You have to experiment.

00:57:13.280 You have to try

00:57:13.740 a range of different things.

00:57:15.040 You have to think about

00:57:15.860 material and cultural

00:57:16.960 incentives.

00:57:17.600 So how can we create,

00:57:19.080 you know,

00:57:19.320 culture can be

00:57:20.140 downstream from politics.

00:57:22.020 Look at how people

00:57:23.100 were very against

00:57:24.320 homosexuality

00:57:26.060 in the 60s.

00:57:27.340 The politicians

00:57:27.880 changed the law.

00:57:29.480 The population

00:57:30.400 got there.

00:57:31.360 The population

00:57:32.040 is very much

00:57:32.740 against the end

00:57:33.800 of the death penalty

00:57:34.460 in the 60s.

00:57:35.460 The politicians

00:57:36.040 changed the law.

00:57:37.340 Eventually,

00:57:38.360 the population

00:57:38.940 came in line.

00:57:39.920 Now, it's not to say

00:57:40.600 that that's the only

00:57:41.420 direction these things

00:57:42.820 will go in.

00:57:43.340 It could go the other way.

00:57:44.540 Often, culture

00:57:45.480 is upstream from politics.

00:57:46.640 What I'm trying to say

00:57:47.280 is if politicians

00:57:47.900 got this

00:57:48.600 and realised

00:57:49.460 it was an issue

00:57:50.100 and addressed it

00:57:51.440 comprehensively,

00:57:52.700 part of the pattern

00:57:53.560 would be how do we

00:57:54.720 change the culture?

00:57:55.500 How do we change

00:57:56.040 the education?

00:57:56.900 What do people

00:57:57.440 learn in schools?

00:57:58.420 How often are the

00:57:59.260 environmental arguments

00:58:00.240 reposted?

00:58:01.040 What are the role models?

00:58:02.220 I mean, I often think

00:58:03.000 I think I wrote

00:58:04.220 in my last book,

00:58:05.100 you know,

00:58:05.360 we need more role models

00:58:06.640 like young men

00:58:07.460 having large families,

00:58:08.720 relatively large families,

00:58:09.900 like Prince William

00:58:10.940 and David Beckham.

00:58:12.300 And someone pointed out

00:58:13.140 to me,

00:58:13.600 they're not really young men,

00:58:14.700 but of course,

00:58:15.280 from my perspective,

00:58:16.180 they are.

00:58:17.000 But I think

00:58:17.480 it's also very interesting.

00:58:19.280 Sorry, I'm a bit

00:58:19.860 of a tangent,

00:58:20.560 but there were two bumps

00:58:22.060 of the post-war baby boom

00:58:23.400 and I called them

00:58:24.440 the Anne and Charles bump

00:58:25.620 and the Andrew and Edward bump

00:58:27.340 because it was precisely

00:58:28.820 around 1948, 1950

00:58:30.680 and 1962, 1964.

00:58:33.000 So I'm not saying

00:58:33.720 everyone just copied

00:58:34.500 the Queen,

00:58:34.980 but there was a sense

00:58:35.880 that the Queen,

00:58:37.560 the late Queen

00:58:38.320 was a role model in that.

00:58:39.860 So I think it's about

00:58:40.600 role models,

00:58:41.680 it's about the state

00:58:43.160 sending the right signals,

00:58:44.500 it's also about financial things,

00:58:46.080 it's also about housing

00:58:46.980 and childcare,

00:58:47.640 it's a whole raft

00:58:48.340 of things that we can do.

00:58:50.420 We have to be experimental,

00:58:51.860 we have to try

00:58:52.600 all sorts of different approaches,

00:58:54.080 we have to change them

00:58:55.200 over time.

00:58:56.100 So I haven't got

00:58:56.900 a single set of

00:58:57.980 policy prescriptions,

00:58:59.680 but what I do think

00:59:00.840 is that we aren't

00:59:01.880 even starting to do this

00:59:03.640 because as we are

00:59:05.980 at the moment,

00:59:07.180 none of the front-ranking

00:59:08.180 politicians are talking

00:59:09.060 about it.

00:59:09.900 So it's almost as if

00:59:11.700 the analogy I gave

00:59:12.420 the other day was

00:59:13.120 it's like I'm saying

00:59:14.560 we need railways

00:59:15.500 and I've designed

00:59:16.800 this railway engine

00:59:17.760 and people say,

00:59:18.940 well, tell me more

00:59:19.740 about this, that,

00:59:20.380 and no one's intending

00:59:21.380 to build any rails, right?

00:59:23.380 There is no rail network

00:59:24.440 in the country,

00:59:25.100 but they want more

00:59:26.300 and more specific designs

00:59:27.700 about the railway engine.

00:59:29.640 There are lots and lots

00:59:30.800 of different ideas out there.

00:59:32.220 We don't know

00:59:32.760 what will work.

00:59:33.700 Different things will work

00:59:34.400 at different times,

00:59:35.560 but can we at least

00:59:36.360 start it by saying

00:59:37.580 the government is serious

00:59:38.720 about that?

00:59:39.180 And we've seen

00:59:39.620 after 50 years

00:59:40.600 of sub-replacement fertility,

00:59:41.820 nearly 55 years,

00:59:43.260 we don't even seem

00:59:44.100 to have got off the ground.

00:59:45.900 So we're still talking

00:59:46.520 about the engine,

00:59:47.440 which is lovely,

00:59:48.460 but no one's putting

00:59:49.300 any tracks in.

00:59:50.680 Paul, do you think

00:59:51.340 part of the issue is

00:59:52.640 that for some weird reason

00:59:56.120 people frame this

00:59:57.720 as a right-wing issue?

01:00:00.860 I think they do

01:00:01.920 in the Anglo world,

01:00:03.280 as I've said.

01:00:04.040 So I wrote an article

01:00:05.900 in the Sunday Times

01:00:06.920 about why we need

01:00:08.080 to have more children,

01:00:08.840 and I said we should

01:00:10.000 probably differentiate

01:00:10.740 on tax.

01:00:11.940 So ideally we'd give tax cuts

01:00:13.980 to people with kids,

01:00:15.160 but it may be that

01:00:16.040 we can't afford to do that,

01:00:17.860 so we'll have to vary the tax.

01:00:19.060 That might mean higher taxes

01:00:19.980 to people without John.

01:00:20.900 So they chose to call

01:00:22.220 to entitle it

01:00:23.440 Is It Time to Tax the Childless?,

01:00:25.700 which I never objected to.

01:00:27.180 I thought that's

01:00:27.700 absolutely a reasonable title.

01:00:29.040 It's a bit click-baity,

01:00:30.420 but fine.

01:00:30.940 I mean,

01:00:31.080 they've got to sell newspapers.

01:00:32.440 And I got unbelievable invective.

01:00:34.400 I mean,

01:00:34.560 I was practically accused...

01:00:35.620 Really?

01:00:35.900 Oh, I mean,

01:00:36.700 I was practically accused

01:00:39.780 of being a Nazi.

01:00:41.860 Welcome.

01:00:42.720 And there was a certain

01:00:45.300 well-known left-wing podcast,

01:00:46.780 which I will not mention,

01:00:48.600 which called me,

01:00:49.780 what did they call me?

01:00:51.160 Sinister and Unhinged.

01:00:53.240 But I actually went on that podcast,

01:00:57.140 and I was introduced to the person

01:00:58.680 who had called me

01:00:59.420 Sinister and Unhinged,

01:01:00.740 and he had no memory of that.

01:01:02.320 And when he dug back,

01:01:03.280 this was like a year and a half later,

01:01:04.640 he actually apologised to me on Twitter.

01:01:06.700 And I really take my hat off to him for that.

01:01:09.160 So I think there's a bit of a change

01:01:10.940 in the atmosphere.

01:01:12.360 I think I can go on.

01:01:13.740 I got a good review

01:01:14.940 for a previous book in The Guardian,

01:01:16.800 which sort of slightly surprised me.

01:01:18.740 It's only a...

01:01:19.720 So again, as I say,

01:01:20.600 you know,

01:01:20.820 Malthus was attacked by Marx.

01:01:22.960 Stalin gave out prize.

01:01:24.140 The trouble with the left is

01:01:25.160 the heroes of yesterday

01:01:26.600 are not the heroes of today.

01:01:28.060 If you point out to somebody

01:01:29.440 that the Soviet Union or Cuba

01:01:33.500 was giving prizes for women,

01:01:35.420 or they say,

01:01:36.800 well, that wasn't socialism.

01:01:37.940 So it's always...

01:01:39.300 It's kind of embarrassing

01:01:40.400 to be associated with Stalin.

01:01:42.240 Yeah, OK, but Castro,

01:01:43.460 I mean, I wouldn't want to be,

01:01:44.520 but some people are,

01:01:45.340 or Che Guevara or whatever.

01:01:47.640 You know,

01:01:47.940 so the left is always changing its heroes,

01:01:50.280 and it's sort of changing its story.

01:01:52.400 But I think there is,

01:01:53.420 just as within feminism,

01:01:55.020 there is a rich seam,

01:01:57.460 historically,

01:01:58.020 of pronatalism.

01:01:59.320 So within the left,

01:02:00.700 there is a rich seam of pronatalism,

01:02:03.020 because, you know,

01:02:03.680 people say to me,

01:02:04.320 oh, you just want to create

01:02:05.260 the next generation of slaves

01:02:06.540 for capitalism or whatever.

01:02:08.060 But I always say,

01:02:08.860 why was the Soviet Union pronatal?

01:02:10.720 Because if you want your economy

01:02:12.760 to keep going,

01:02:13.540 whether it's a centrally planned economy

01:02:15.260 or a free market economy,

01:02:16.740 you can't do it.

01:02:18.500 We may come on to talk about AI

01:02:20.040 and why technology is not the solution,

01:02:21.440 but unless you believe abracadabra,

01:02:23.860 we're not going to need workers,

01:02:24.940 you can't do it without people.

01:02:27.840 If you want your society,

01:02:29.500 your culture,

01:02:30.080 your tradition,

01:02:30.700 your nation to thrive,

01:02:32.420 which people on the left

01:02:33.420 traditionally have done,

01:02:35.040 then you need a next generation.

01:02:37.440 So, as I said,

01:02:38.960 it's only really a,

01:02:40.760 I think it's a very Anglo thing

01:02:42.360 to think that it's a right-wing thing.

01:02:44.740 And I'm very pleased

01:02:46.180 that people on the left

01:02:46.920 are starting to acknowledge that,

01:02:48.520 starting to think about it.

01:02:50.300 And, you know,

01:02:51.280 I don't apologise for the fact

01:02:52.540 I am on the right,

01:02:53.900 whatever that means,

01:02:54.760 but I try and make this appeal

01:02:57.780 to, you know,

01:02:58.260 as I am moderately religious,

01:03:00.120 but I try and make this appeal

01:03:01.580 to people who are fully secular

01:03:03.600 and I try and make this appeal

01:03:04.900 to people who are on the left.

01:03:06.360 And, you know,

01:03:07.140 hopefully fewer and fewer of them

01:03:08.540 will call me unhinged and sinister.

01:03:10.620 Well, you're talking...

01:03:11.000 Although I thought it was,

01:03:11.680 I had to certainly learn about it.

01:03:13.020 Yeah, it's true.

01:03:13.920 Well, you're talking sense,

01:03:15.660 so I think people can hear it,

01:03:17.860 hopefully,

01:03:18.420 across the political spectrum.

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01:04:44.920 One of the things that you've mentioned

01:04:48.000 a couple of times

01:04:48.960 that I wanted to raise with you as well

01:04:51.700 as part of this conversation

01:04:53.620 is immigration

01:04:55.460 and the cultural impact

01:04:58.560 and how all of this ties together.

01:05:00.860 One of the things that I think the tabloids

01:05:03.120 particularly like quoting your research about

01:05:05.520 is that by 2066,

01:05:07.860 at least in the last time

01:05:09.440 you were quoted on this,

01:05:12.520 white British people

01:05:13.820 will become a minority in this country.

01:05:15.780 Is that still on course to happen?

01:05:18.000 Well, I was only quoting the work

01:05:19.840 of David Coleman,

01:05:21.940 who's a demographer at Oxford,

01:05:23.600 that those numbers are being revised

01:05:25.680 as we speak,

01:05:27.020 not by me,

01:05:27.740 but by a friend of mine.

01:05:29.140 I probably shouldn't reveal who it is,

01:05:30.600 but he will make his research known

01:05:32.880 when he's ready to.

01:05:34.000 Someone associated with the political world

01:05:36.720 in this country.

01:05:38.760 I think you can do the numbers

01:05:40.300 and then of course the answer is always,

01:05:42.160 so what?

01:05:42.680 Does it matter?

01:05:43.780 Does it have an effect?

01:05:45.360 Do we care?

01:05:46.820 Aren't human beings all utterly interchangeable?

01:05:49.880 And I think there are a range of answers

01:05:51.720 you can give to that.

01:05:52.500 So first of all,

01:05:53.260 as I've told you,

01:05:54.180 I am the son of immigrants.

01:05:55.920 I don't have a drop of British blood in me.

01:05:58.360 My parents changed their name

01:05:59.580 from a German name to an English name.

01:06:02.040 I feel very affiliated

01:06:03.920 and associated with this country,

01:06:05.640 but I'm grafted on, if you like.

01:06:08.100 Now, traditionally,

01:06:09.980 if you thought about a nation

01:06:11.260 or an ethnic group,

01:06:13.680 there was always something cool.

01:06:15.040 A friend of mine,

01:06:15.740 a theorist of nationalism

01:06:16.720 called Anthony Smith,

01:06:17.860 Professor Anthony Smith from the LSE,

01:06:19.460 he's no longer with us,

01:06:20.660 he used to speak about

01:06:21.560 the myth of common ancestry,

01:06:23.160 which is to say

01:06:23.820 that for a nation to cohere,

01:06:26.040 there needed to be some sense

01:06:27.540 that the majority of its people

01:06:29.340 stemmed from the same origin.

01:06:31.500 It may be a myth,

01:06:32.460 it may be untrue,

01:06:33.660 or it may be true,

01:06:34.600 and geneticists can show this much more.

01:06:36.720 I mean, I always remember

01:06:37.500 I went to Sri Lanka

01:06:38.280 and a Sinhalese professor said to me,

01:06:40.860 we're all Tamils.

01:06:41.600 In other words,

01:06:42.020 there was a tiny, tiny Sinhalese immigration

01:06:44.240 years and years ago.

01:06:45.840 Lots of South Indians came

01:06:47.160 and accreted to it.

01:06:48.280 And that was a myth of common.

01:06:49.680 People have their myths.

01:06:51.360 Genetics proves facts

01:06:53.440 in a way that it couldn't,

01:06:55.280 sort of 30, 40 years ago.

01:06:56.540 But most nations traditionally,

01:07:00.780 most ethnic groups,

01:07:01.920 have by definition

01:07:02.880 associated themselves

01:07:04.360 with having a single common ancestry.

01:07:07.020 Now, we live in a cosmopolitan liberal world

01:07:10.320 where people think

01:07:12.380 that's not the case anymore.

01:07:13.760 It doesn't matter.

01:07:15.180 It doesn't count.

01:07:16.680 And anyone who thinks

01:07:17.860 that it does count,

01:07:18.860 again, is some sort of

01:07:19.820 loony right-winger.

01:07:20.940 OK, I think we should still be able

01:07:23.320 to have the conversation

01:07:24.180 about what the ethnic composition

01:07:25.660 of the country is now,

01:07:27.500 what it will be in the future.

01:07:28.860 After all, white British,

01:07:30.640 if you say white British,

01:07:32.400 it's a category in the census.

01:07:34.460 People are invited

01:07:35.640 to identify themselves

01:07:36.820 as white British

01:07:37.540 or not by the state.

01:07:39.420 So I think we can at least

01:07:42.620 do the modelling.

01:07:43.960 We can look at the numbers

01:07:45.900 and then people can say,

01:07:47.320 does it matter

01:07:48.120 or doesn't it matter?

01:07:49.020 And again,

01:07:49.360 better minds than my

01:07:50.660 sort of humble demographers' minds

01:07:52.740 will determine

01:07:54.080 and contribute to that debate

01:07:55.940 about whether one person

01:07:57.680 is totally interchangeable

01:07:58.660 with another,

01:07:59.280 whether Koreans' demographic problems

01:08:01.900 can be solved

01:08:02.620 by bringing a lot of people

01:08:03.880 from Burundi

01:08:04.540 because Burundians

01:08:05.260 and Koreans are no different,

01:08:06.520 or whether actually

01:08:07.660 a sense of common ancestry

01:08:09.700 is important to a country

01:08:11.360 to make it cohesive

01:08:12.240 and cultural continuity

01:08:14.280 can't really be achieved

01:08:16.360 when you have people

01:08:17.760 from all sorts of countries

01:08:19.280 coming together

01:08:19.880 and becoming ultimately

01:08:20.900 a majority.

01:08:21.880 Well, it seems to me

01:08:22.680 it's a flow issue as well

01:08:24.100 because I think that

01:08:25.520 you can integrate people

01:08:27.260 over time,

01:08:28.880 provided that it's

01:08:30.160 in certain numbers,

01:08:31.460 you choose them carefully,

01:08:32.640 there's a very strong structure

01:08:34.200 for people to be

01:08:35.200 integrated into.

01:08:37.180 And I guess the issue

01:08:38.420 that is inevitably

01:08:39.800 coming to the fore

01:08:41.080 out of everything

01:08:41.660 that you're saying

01:08:42.340 is if we fail

01:08:43.500 to reproduce

01:08:44.180 the quantities

01:08:45.500 of immigrants

01:08:46.120 that we're going to need

01:08:47.360 to come in

01:08:48.280 and do the social care work,

01:08:50.040 do work in the

01:08:50.900 National Health Service,

01:08:52.160 to deliver food

01:08:53.680 and all the rest of it,

01:08:55.060 the quantities of people

01:08:56.420 we're going to need

01:08:57.120 are going to be such

01:08:57.880 that integration,

01:09:00.040 which is already

01:09:01.380 a struggle,

01:09:02.200 let's be honest,

01:09:03.340 is going to become

01:09:04.140 utterly impossible.

01:09:05.240 Well, it's going to become

01:09:05.880 impossible because,

01:09:07.520 not only because

01:09:08.380 of the numbers,

01:09:09.160 but also because

01:09:10.200 fewer and fewer countries

01:09:11.720 are having enough children

01:09:13.040 to send their surplus,

01:09:14.340 if you like.

01:09:15.140 So, in Britain,

01:09:16.120 we're used to Polish

01:09:16.880 and traditionally Irish

01:09:18.380 and Polish immigrants

01:09:19.280 who generally

01:09:21.540 integrated fairly rapidly

01:09:22.800 and not in massive numbers,

01:09:24.900 although Irish

01:09:25.700 over a long time.

01:09:26.820 But if you look

01:09:27.440 at the 20-somethings

01:09:28.480 in Ireland and Poland today

01:09:29.660 because of their

01:09:30.260 low fertility rates,

01:09:31.720 and if you look at

01:09:32.300 how they've caught up

01:09:33.040 with Britain economically

01:09:34.020 or are catching up

01:09:35.120 with Britain,

01:09:36.220 they won't have loads

01:09:37.160 of 20-somethings

01:09:38.380 and they won't be

01:09:39.380 hugely attracted

01:09:40.060 to come here.

01:09:40.680 So, we will have to

01:09:41.780 take our immigrant workforce

01:09:42.960 from countries that are

01:09:43.920 more and more culturally

01:09:44.680 distant in greater

01:09:46.220 and greater number.

01:09:47.240 In terms of the

01:09:49.040 relationship to fertility,

01:09:50.680 I wrote, again,

01:09:51.300 I wrote a paper

01:09:51.900 with Philip Pilkington

01:09:52.800 on this.

01:09:53.740 It's my concept

01:09:54.720 of the trilemma,

01:09:55.760 which is that you can

01:09:56.960 have two of three things.

01:09:59.600 And Philip quantified

01:10:01.340 it effectively.

01:10:02.120 You can have

01:10:02.820 what I'd call

01:10:03.920 ethnic continuity

01:10:04.820 if one is allowed

01:10:05.600 to talk about such things.

01:10:06.780 The sense of a people

01:10:08.120 that is indeed descended

01:10:09.440 from people

01:10:10.940 in the same country

01:10:11.840 or the same nation.

01:10:12.900 You can have

01:10:13.920 an economy that functions

01:10:15.380 because you've got

01:10:15.800 a reasonable support ratio,

01:10:17.900 reasonable ratio of workers

01:10:19.100 to retirees.

01:10:21.240 You can have

01:10:21.580 those two things.

01:10:23.020 And you can have

01:10:23.620 lay fertility,

01:10:24.400 small families.

01:10:25.580 You can have two.

01:10:26.420 Think of it as a triangle.

01:10:27.340 You can have two,

01:10:28.080 but you can't have all three.

01:10:29.600 And the models I give

01:10:30.640 for that are Japan

01:10:31.520 choosing to have

01:10:32.280 small families,

01:10:33.080 not mass immigration.

01:10:34.180 So, they want

01:10:34.560 the ethnic continuity.

01:10:35.440 They don't want

01:10:36.580 to have large families.

01:10:37.720 And effectively,

01:10:38.480 they are gradually

01:10:39.420 fading as an economy

01:10:40.720 once the land

01:10:41.780 of the rising sun.

01:10:42.780 Britain,

01:10:43.260 trying to keep

01:10:43.800 the lights on,

01:10:44.480 trying to not go up

01:10:46.500 to 250% tax,

01:10:48.580 government debt

01:10:50.300 to GDP ratio.

01:10:52.520 Also not having

01:10:53.440 very big families,

01:10:54.320 but having smaller families.

01:10:55.520 And the way

01:10:55.940 what Britain then

01:10:56.900 effectively surrenders

01:10:58.180 in any kind

01:10:58.780 of ethnic continuity

01:10:59.660 if that matters,

01:11:01.180 and mass immigration.

01:11:02.560 And only Israel

01:11:03.520 in the developed world,

01:11:04.420 which we've already mentioned,

01:11:05.440 is having enough children

01:11:06.600 that if it wishes,

01:11:07.460 it could completely

01:11:08.060 stop immigration

01:11:08.940 and still keep

01:11:11.080 the economy rolling.

01:11:12.560 So, I think we have

01:11:13.340 to understand the trade-off

01:11:14.360 between those three things.

01:11:16.040 Part of that

01:11:16.840 is my address

01:11:17.920 back to people

01:11:18.680 on the right.

01:11:20.540 You know,

01:11:20.800 I've been on

01:11:21.500 GB News

01:11:22.880 with Nigel Farage,

01:11:24.600 for example,

01:11:24.940 having this conversation.

01:11:26.640 If you think,

01:11:27.240 if you want to

01:11:27.760 restrict immigration

01:11:28.540 and you want

01:11:29.120 the economy to function,

01:11:30.640 you have to think

01:11:32.360 about fertility.

01:11:33.220 Of course,

01:11:33.600 there are lots of things

01:11:34.180 we could do

01:11:34.540 on immigration.

01:11:35.500 Lots of people

01:11:36.000 come to this country

01:11:36.740 and don't work

01:11:37.480 or can't work

01:11:38.360 or are accompanying

01:11:39.920 or supported by.

01:11:41.280 So, we don't have

01:11:42.120 a laser focus

01:11:42.780 on only bringing

01:11:43.440 in a workforce.

01:11:45.120 When people come

01:11:45.900 to work,

01:11:46.340 you don't have

01:11:46.780 to give them

01:11:47.280 automatic citizenship

01:11:48.340 rights or rights

01:11:49.220 to stay.

01:11:49.700 So, a whole range

01:11:50.560 of things about

01:11:51.040 the nature

01:11:51.420 of the immigration

01:11:52.580 policy.

01:11:53.580 But ultimately,

01:11:54.560 people who are

01:11:54.980 concerned about

01:11:55.700 immigration,

01:11:56.380 mass immigration

01:11:57.020 and integration,

01:11:58.440 do need to think

01:11:59.260 about fertility.

01:12:01.640 Well, right.

01:12:02.240 If you don't have

01:12:03.560 enough kids,

01:12:04.020 you're going to have

01:12:04.440 to bring in

01:12:04.860 other people to do...

01:12:05.720 Or you're going to

01:12:06.180 have to effectively

01:12:07.020 disappear.

01:12:07.740 Which is,

01:12:08.300 well, yes,

01:12:09.020 which is where we

01:12:09.600 come back to the

01:12:10.260 one point that you

01:12:11.020 raised,

01:12:11.540 which is always

01:12:12.800 the question

01:12:13.480 at the back

01:12:13.960 of my mind,

01:12:15.220 which is there's

01:12:15.920 this conversation

01:12:16.780 about AI

01:12:17.720 and robotics

01:12:18.360 floating around.

01:12:20.400 And do we really

01:12:22.500 need supermarket

01:12:23.680 cashiers anymore?

01:12:24.860 Well, it seems like

01:12:25.580 we're starting to get

01:12:26.740 to the point where

01:12:27.360 do we really need

01:12:28.620 people to drive

01:12:29.540 buses in the age

01:12:30.580 of self-driving cars?

01:12:33.100 Do we need Uber

01:12:34.220 drivers?

01:12:34.920 Do we need...

01:12:35.700 You know,

01:12:36.120 is our demand

01:12:37.320 for essentially

01:12:39.400 a lot of the jobs

01:12:40.880 that are now being

01:12:41.460 filled by immigration

01:12:42.280 are low-skilled,

01:12:43.400 low-wage jobs.

01:12:44.660 Aren't those

01:12:45.280 exactly the jobs,

01:12:46.340 Paul, people will

01:12:47.020 say to you

01:12:47.720 that are going to

01:12:48.720 get demolished

01:12:49.460 by AI and robotics

01:12:50.640 and actually we just

01:12:51.580 need to sit tight

01:12:52.400 and 20 years from now

01:12:53.520 we're not going to

01:12:54.280 have this problem?

01:12:55.360 I doubt it.

01:12:55.980 So, in the book

01:12:57.000 I've got a chapter

01:12:57.640 on this.

01:12:58.260 I look back to the

01:12:59.280 Luddites who said

01:13:00.080 they're bringing

01:13:00.480 machinery,

01:13:01.880 something called

01:13:02.460 the Industrial

01:13:02.880 Revolution will

01:13:03.520 happen, of course

01:13:04.000 they didn't call it

01:13:04.620 that, we won't

01:13:05.440 have jobs,

01:13:05.960 that's smashing

01:13:06.380 machines.

01:13:07.080 Now, they didn't

01:13:07.980 succeed, they in

01:13:09.060 turn were smashed

01:13:09.680 as a political

01:13:10.220 movement or as a

01:13:10.980 movement, and the

01:13:12.220 Industrial Revolution

01:13:12.900 gave rise to a

01:13:13.680 huge number of

01:13:14.300 jobs.

01:13:14.940 And if you'd said

01:13:15.560 in 1800 most people

01:13:17.600 will not be working

01:13:18.820 in agriculture, it'll

01:13:19.580 be a small share,

01:13:20.440 people say, well

01:13:20.960 that's what people

01:13:21.980 do, and if no one's

01:13:23.020 working in agriculture

01:13:23.760 because of machines,

01:13:24.460 then there'll be no

01:13:25.560 job.

01:13:26.160 Equally, if you'd

01:13:26.960 said in 1900 very

01:13:28.240 few people will work

01:13:29.080 in industry, and the

01:13:29.840 ports and the mines

01:13:30.580 and the shipbuilding,

01:13:31.620 they'd have said, well

01:13:32.380 what will people do?

01:13:33.640 We are always, so

01:13:34.660 first of all, we're

01:13:35.160 always inventing new

01:13:35.940 technology which

01:13:36.620 replaces jobs.

01:13:38.160 Again, the example I

01:13:39.040 give in the book is

01:13:39.760 thousands, tens of

01:13:41.200 thousands, possibly

01:13:41.720 hundreds of thousands

01:13:42.420 of people in this

01:13:43.160 country were involved

01:13:44.460 in breeding horses,

01:13:45.980 feeding horses,

01:13:46.920 growing food for

01:13:47.760 horses, building the

01:13:49.040 places, stable.

01:13:50.060 The whole thing

01:13:51.280 went effectively

01:13:52.280 between, let's say,

01:13:53.200 the early 1890s

01:13:54.720 and the end of the

01:13:56.420 interwar period.

01:13:58.300 The number of

01:13:58.720 horses collapsed.

01:13:59.920 We never hear about

01:14:00.860 that, do we?

01:14:01.380 Because people found

01:14:02.480 other things to do.

01:14:04.120 So where are we now?

01:14:05.360 We still have new

01:14:06.240 technology, we still

01:14:07.300 have innovation, we

01:14:08.840 still have job

01:14:09.540 replacement.

01:14:10.520 It may be that all

01:14:11.780 the cab drivers will

01:14:12.800 go, but I've been

01:14:14.140 hearing that for a

01:14:14.840 long time.

01:14:15.380 So I'm a little bit

01:14:16.000 cynical about how

01:14:16.760 quickly, or sceptical

01:14:17.840 about how quickly

01:14:18.560 it's happening.

01:14:19.680 And the other thing

01:14:20.560 is that if you look

01:14:21.320 at the economic

01:14:21.920 data, if we were

01:14:23.220 on the cusp of

01:14:24.000 this, we would be

01:14:25.160 seeing huge

01:14:25.700 productivity gains.

01:14:26.820 So GDP per hour

01:14:28.900 worked would be

01:14:29.780 going up.

01:14:30.280 We'd either have

01:14:30.720 say, to put it

01:14:31.540 simply, the same

01:14:32.200 workforce massively

01:14:33.880 increasing its

01:14:34.700 productivity, or

01:14:35.440 we'd produce

01:14:36.360 today's economy

01:14:37.100 with fewer and

01:14:37.620 fewer people,

01:14:38.400 have an

01:14:38.640 unemployment

01:14:39.020 problem.

01:14:39.720 But anyway,

01:14:40.220 per hour work,

01:14:41.780 our productivity

01:14:43.560 would be going

01:14:44.240 up.

01:14:44.420 As we've had all

01:14:45.100 these wonderful

01:14:45.700 new technologies

01:14:46.680 the last 30,

01:14:47.400 40 years, the

01:14:48.540 laptop, the

01:14:49.360 PC, the

01:14:50.160 laptop, the

01:14:50.920 internet, etc.

01:14:52.860 None of these

01:14:53.580 have actually

01:14:53.960 increased productivity.

01:14:56.040 And there's a

01:14:56.620 whole discussion

01:14:57.400 among economists

01:14:58.120 as to why that

01:14:58.920 is.

01:14:59.380 And we could be

01:15:00.020 on the cusp.

01:15:00.600 You know, I

01:15:00.860 might be here in

01:15:01.400 five years'

01:15:01.920 time, and I

01:15:02.700 was totally

01:15:03.100 wrong, and we're

01:15:03.640 all sitting around

01:15:04.220 with nothing to

01:15:04.780 do, because the

01:15:05.680 podcasts are made

01:15:06.500 by AI and the

01:15:07.480 demography.

01:15:08.020 Right, let's not

01:15:08.400 go too far, mate.

01:15:09.320 We just got to a

01:15:11.020 point where we're

01:15:11.460 quite happy with

01:15:12.040 this.

01:15:12.400 What you're saying

01:15:12.980 is you could be

01:15:13.540 here five years

01:15:14.100 from now eating

01:15:14.720 your hat.

01:15:15.260 Yeah, but I

01:15:15.920 don't think I

01:15:16.340 will be.

01:15:17.240 You know, this

01:15:17.880 time could be

01:15:18.460 different again.

01:15:20.380 And when you

01:15:22.120 actually look around

01:15:22.760 the economy, so

01:15:24.220 many of the jobs

01:15:25.040 we see that people

01:15:25.980 are doing today

01:15:26.840 are not jobs

01:15:28.100 that are easily,

01:15:28.820 including the

01:15:29.620 lower-end, less

01:15:30.680 well-paid jobs,

01:15:31.960 are not jobs that

01:15:32.860 are easily going

01:15:33.640 to be replaced by

01:15:34.700 AI.

01:15:35.140 If you understand

01:15:35.800 AI and you

01:15:36.880 understand the

01:15:37.420 maths and the

01:15:38.400 brain science,

01:15:39.660 there is a view

01:15:40.340 that it's a long,

01:15:41.720 long, long time

01:15:42.420 before we're going

01:15:43.000 to have someone

01:15:43.480 picking up the

01:15:44.160 bins.

01:15:44.820 It's a long,

01:15:45.660 long, long time

01:15:46.260 before we're

01:15:46.660 going to have,

01:15:47.100 I mean, someone,

01:15:47.720 sorry, a computer

01:15:48.460 or a robot.

01:15:49.480 A long, long time

01:15:50.100 before AI is going

01:15:51.020 to take Granny

01:15:51.560 to the toilet.

01:15:52.620 It's a long time

01:15:53.360 before AI is going

01:15:54.520 to fix my tap,

01:15:56.300 fix my roof,

01:15:57.880 be a brain surgeon.

01:16:01.120 You know, AI may

01:16:02.140 help these activities

01:16:03.480 to a limited extent,

01:16:05.400 but the idea that

01:16:06.320 it's going to

01:16:06.800 replace labour

01:16:07.800 is unlikely.

01:16:09.660 I think within

01:16:10.420 the sort of

01:16:11.280 time frame that

01:16:12.540 we can see

01:16:13.120 populations are

01:16:13.860 going to collapse.

01:16:14.400 So, again,

01:16:15.360 think of 100

01:16:16.200 Korean grandparents,

01:16:18.320 33 children,

01:16:19.660 11 grandchildren.

01:16:21.040 That is a pretty

01:16:22.140 fast pace

01:16:22.980 if a generation

01:16:23.680 is 25 to 35 years.

01:16:25.800 Are we really

01:16:26.400 going to see AI

01:16:27.260 doing all of this

01:16:28.160 by then?

01:16:29.460 Call me sceptical.

01:16:30.660 I don't think so.

01:16:31.860 And the demographic

01:16:33.640 problem

01:16:34.680 is very tangible.

01:16:36.840 The technological

01:16:37.480 solution

01:16:38.060 is somewhat tenuous,

01:16:39.500 to put it mildly.

01:16:40.280 Paul, thank you

01:16:41.960 so much for coming

01:16:42.740 on the show.

01:16:43.340 Before we head

01:16:43.800 over to our

01:16:44.300 substack, where

01:16:44.960 our supporters

01:16:45.440 get to ask

01:16:46.040 their questions

01:16:46.640 to you,

01:16:47.560 our final question

01:16:48.280 is always the

01:16:48.820 same.

01:16:49.180 What's the one

01:16:49.680 thing we're not

01:16:50.180 talking about

01:16:50.780 that we really

01:16:51.500 should be?

01:16:52.440 Before Paul answers

01:16:53.360 the final question,

01:16:54.400 at the end of the

01:16:55.280 interview, make

01:16:56.180 sure you click

01:16:56.860 the link in the

01:16:57.660 description to go

01:16:58.520 to our substack

01:16:59.300 to see this.

01:17:00.300 Can you fix

01:17:01.960 the population

01:17:02.440 decline issue

01:17:03.180 without first

01:17:03.980 addressing the

01:17:05.200 marriage issue?

01:17:06.480 Is there a way

01:17:07.380 to balance

01:17:07.860 education and

01:17:08.660 family life,

01:17:09.520 or will the

01:17:09.880 increasing time

01:17:10.800 in education

01:17:11.440 keep pushing

01:17:12.780 back starting

01:17:13.380 a family?

01:17:14.020 Can we adjust

01:17:14.960 and learn to

01:17:15.540 live with fewer

01:17:16.160 people without

01:17:16.720 substantially reducing

01:17:17.820 our standard of

01:17:18.480 living?

01:17:19.340 Well, the obvious

01:17:20.240 one is fertility,

01:17:21.180 but we have been

01:17:21.760 talking about that.

01:17:23.280 So the thing

01:17:23.860 that kind of my

01:17:24.840 sort of second

01:17:26.800 crusade, if you

01:17:27.680 like, is that

01:17:28.880 the whole woke

01:17:31.480 agenda and the

01:17:32.860 whole decolonisation

01:17:35.680 agenda would not

01:17:37.240 exist.

01:17:38.200 It's pushing at an

01:17:39.060 open door.

01:17:39.900 It wouldn't exist

01:17:40.640 if the door were

01:17:41.540 firmly shut.

01:17:43.140 And the reason

01:17:43.660 it's not firmly

01:17:44.280 shut is that the

01:17:45.140 country as a whole,

01:17:46.000 Britain, most of

01:17:47.040 the West, does not

01:17:47.680 fully appreciate its

01:17:48.600 cultural, its

01:17:49.720 scientific, its

01:17:50.580 technological

01:17:51.100 background, and

01:17:52.440 what it's achieved.

01:17:53.320 And in order to

01:17:54.100 address that, in my

01:17:54.920 little way, my

01:17:55.680 friend Ed West and

01:17:57.260 I have been doing

01:17:57.960 these podcasts,

01:17:58.880 called the

01:17:59.520 Canon Club, the

01:18:00.620 idea is just to

01:18:01.440 introduce an expert

01:18:02.520 on Anna Karenina,

01:18:04.460 on Raymond-esque

01:18:05.160 architecture, on

01:18:06.660 Shostakovich, on

01:18:08.140 Thomas Munn, just to

01:18:09.540 give people a better

01:18:10.480 sense, and obviously

01:18:11.580 it's a very small

01:18:12.720 enterprise at this

01:18:13.920 stage, but I think

01:18:14.920 if people were fired

01:18:16.540 up and charged up,

01:18:17.660 when I think of my

01:18:18.460 childhood, I knew

01:18:19.740 lots of people who

01:18:20.460 left school at 12 or

01:18:21.420 14, who'd fought in

01:18:23.280 the services in the

01:18:24.700 war, who'd gone and

01:18:25.660 heard Myra Hess playing

01:18:27.080 the piano in the

01:18:27.720 National Gallery, and

01:18:28.880 who aspired to this

01:18:30.960 great civilisation, and

01:18:32.000 to be fair, in the

01:18:32.820 Soviet Union, once

01:18:33.620 they'd gone through

01:18:34.080 prolet cult, and

01:18:35.200 they'd gone through

01:18:35.740 socialist realism, that

01:18:38.200 was a society for all

01:18:39.260 its ills, which said

01:18:40.440 these are the great

01:18:41.420 fruits of human

01:18:42.720 history, even if they

01:18:43.640 were produced by

01:18:44.280 bourgeois society, they

01:18:45.640 should be available to

01:18:46.480 everybody.

01:18:47.700 So I knew these quite

01:18:48.800 working class, lower

01:18:50.500 middle class people,

01:18:51.340 little education, who

01:18:52.140 aspired in that

01:18:52.980 generation, people born

01:18:53.960 in the interwar period

01:18:55.440 or before the First

01:18:56.100 World War.

01:18:57.100 And then when I was

01:18:57.700 working, I was working

01:18:58.560 with all these very

01:18:59.380 bright, Oxford-educated

01:19:00.980 Harvard kids who

01:19:02.860 wouldn't, who didn't

01:19:04.240 have a clue.

01:19:05.180 So I think we really

01:19:06.740 need a cultural

01:19:07.520 rearmament if we're

01:19:08.980 going to push back

01:19:09.660 against the kind of

01:19:11.500 decolonising of our

01:19:14.100 societies, our culture,

01:19:15.440 and our academia.

01:19:16.800 And I think that's what

01:19:17.920 we're not talking about,

01:19:18.980 and that's what Ed and

01:19:20.060 I are trying to do

01:19:20.740 something about.

01:19:21.720 That is the most

01:19:22.160 elegant podcast plug I've

01:19:23.560 ever heard.

01:19:24.400 All right, head on

01:19:25.360 over to our sub stack

01:19:26.200 where we ask Paul your

01:19:27.540 questions.

01:19:29.780 Given that continuing

01:19:31.060 growth in a finite

01:19:32.320 system is impossible,

01:19:33.980 are we approaching a

01:19:35.160 point in which we

01:19:35.820 should be looking to

01:19:36.580 achieve homeostasis and

01:19:37.800 therefore should be

01:19:38.440 working out how to

01:19:39.720 make that work rather

01:19:40.840 than demanding more

01:19:41.780 babies?

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TRIGGERnometry - March 09, 2025

Population Collapse is a Massive Problem - Dr Paul Morland

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