TRIGGERnometry - The Depopulation Bomb： Stephen J. Shaw

00:00:00.560 How can the world's population be collapsing if we're still growing?

00:00:03.840 That's the conundrum. It really is counterintuitive.

00:00:07.120 Last year, there were only 700,000 babies being born.

00:00:10.240 So there's a 22% drop already in the UK.

00:00:14.240 Countries like Italy are 55% down.

00:00:17.520 Germany's 36% down.

00:00:19.520 Japan's 55% down.

00:00:21.680 I don't know why we're being told this absolute nonsense

00:00:24.240 about population explosions when that was a thing of the past.

00:00:27.760 What clearly occurred was a deferring of parenthood.

00:00:34.080 It wasn't that people suddenly decided,

00:00:36.000 OK, well, I'm not going to have children.

00:00:38.560 It was more that people decided,

00:00:40.000 well, I'm not going to do it now.

00:00:41.120 He's 25, 27.

00:00:42.400 I'm going to wait till I'm 30.

00:00:43.920 And that's the pattern.

00:00:45.520 Actually, more childless men than childless women.

00:00:49.200 And I think men need to understand

00:00:50.560 that this applies to them just as much.

00:00:57.760 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:04.880 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:06.080 I'm Constantine Kissinger.

00:01:07.200 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations

00:01:10.560 with fascinating people.

00:01:12.480 Our brilliant guest today is a data scientist, demographer,

00:01:15.680 and the creator of a very, very good and important film

00:01:18.960 called Birth Gap.

00:01:20.160 Stephen Jay Shaw, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:22.000 Thank you for inviting me here.

00:01:23.200 Oh, it's a great pleasure to have you on the show.

00:01:25.600 You are talking about an issue that I genuinely think

00:01:28.960 will be the biggest conversation over the next five to 10 years,

00:01:33.440 that all of Western societies and actually, frankly,

00:01:36.400 societies outside the West are going to be having

00:01:38.960 and seeing as crucial to their survival, frankly.

00:01:42.240 Before we get into all of that, though, who are you?

00:01:44.560 What has been your journey through life?

00:01:45.920 How do you find yourself sitting here talking to us?

00:01:48.400 Well, I didn't expect that I'd find myself

00:01:50.000 talking to anybody about a film I'd be in.

00:01:51.920 I never intended to be a filmmaker.

00:01:54.400 My background is, first of all, in engineering, computer coding.

00:01:58.160 For 20 years, I've run a data analytics company out of the US

00:02:01.280 doing forecasting and data predictions for industries

00:02:04.640 like the car industry.

00:02:06.560 And seven years ago, I saw some data that basically pointed

00:02:09.600 to the world's population collapsing that shocked me so much

00:02:13.200 that I decided I needed to write a book about it.

00:02:15.680 My younger son said,

00:02:16.800 Dad, younger people don't read books anymore.

00:02:18.800 We watch documentaries.

00:02:19.840 I thought, well, there's no way I'm ever going to do that.

00:02:22.880 That's the end of this story for me, until I came across someone who was in that world.

00:02:27.920 And seven years later, yeah, the Birth Gap Chalice World documentary, yeah, it is out.

00:02:32.400 You should have made it a TikTok documentary if you really want to reach the young people,

00:02:35.680 just 20 seconds.

00:02:36.640 But Birth Gap, I've had a chance to watch part of it.

00:02:41.280 And as I say, it's super important.

00:02:44.560 Explain to everybody, look, we all know, right, that the population of the world is exploding.

00:02:49.200 You know, we're going to be on nine billion people by whenever.

00:02:52.080 We're never going to have enough resources.

00:02:53.600 We're all going to die.

00:02:54.400 The planet's going to burn.

00:02:55.520 We've got 12 good harvests left and all of that.

00:02:57.680 Isn't that all true and right?

00:02:59.920 Right.

00:03:00.480 So how can the world's population be collapsing if we're still growing?

00:03:04.240 That's the conundrum.

00:03:05.040 It really is counterintuitive, but it's true.

00:03:08.720 The reason the world's population is still growing is only because people are living

00:03:12.640 longer and surviving longer.

00:03:15.360 In fact, in the case of countries like India, for example, like parts of Africa,

00:03:19.120 where many people would have died in childhood, that didn't happen 30, 40 years ago.

00:03:24.720 So as a planet, we've got a lot of young people who will simply live through their lives.

00:03:29.600 And that's a good thing, but that's not going to go on forever.

00:03:32.480 We know we will max out at no more than 11 billion, possibly a little bit less,

00:03:38.160 but we're aging.

00:03:39.280 So all growth is coming from aging.

00:03:42.480 And if you look at the total number of babies being born on the planet,

00:03:45.920 we hit a maximum around 2014 of 143 million babies being born that year.

00:03:52.080 It's never been higher and they don't think it will be as high again.

00:03:55.120 More recently, that's down to 132 million.

00:03:58.480 So we're basically 10 million down already in 10 years compared to what we were in 2014.

00:04:05.360 That's globally.

00:04:06.480 That includes sub-Saharan Africa.

00:04:09.520 If you look at countries like where I live, Japan, it's just frightening. 1.00

00:04:12.880 And so is China. 0.89

00:04:13.840 And so is much of Europe.

00:04:15.440 And frankly, the rest of the world is on the same path.

00:04:17.760 What I'm getting at, though, Stephen, is to people who are not familiar with the issue that we're talking about,

00:04:23.440 which is the fact that we're not having enough kids, basically, to put it simply.

00:04:28.160 The narrative has been for many, many years, for decades, actually, that there's a population bomb.

00:04:33.520 There was a book of that name that had a huge impact on how people thought about this.

00:04:37.680 Yes.

00:04:38.080 That the expanding population of human beings on the planet was a fundamental threat to the people who were already alive,

00:04:46.000 but also to the planet itself.

00:04:47.840 And what you're saying is the opposite of that, which is we're not having enough children.

00:04:52.080 So how does one reconcile that if it's the first time they've encountered your data and your information?

00:04:58.800 Well, the data, the information we're being given is wrong, vastly outdated.

00:05:04.080 We already knew back in the 70s that the world's population was going to peak.

00:05:08.480 We already knew it was going to peak at around what we are now.

00:05:11.680 And because we saw falling birth rates everywhere at that time, almost everywhere.

00:05:16.320 But the trend was constant.

00:05:18.080 But these voices have been there and they've infuriated me.

00:05:22.240 I think that's one of the reasons I made the documentary, because I thought,

00:05:25.280 I'm involved in data prediction.

00:05:27.040 I have three children I'm trying to educate.

00:05:29.680 There were teenagers at that time to prepare for the future.

00:05:32.800 Why don't I know?

00:05:34.880 Not only that, the clients I have, including some pretty senior executives in industries around the world,

00:05:41.440 who I'm talking to about planning and forecasting,

00:05:44.000 no one in those corporations is talking about what we're talking about here, population decline and collapse.

00:05:51.120 So I felt that nobody knows about this.

00:05:53.600 So what are these voices?

00:05:55.200 Why is it that we, through education systems, through the media,

00:05:59.840 are bombarding us with this utter nonsense about population explosions?

00:06:04.080 Yes, the world's population did increase.

00:06:06.240 It clearly is still aging.

00:06:08.240 But the underlying trend, which is what we need to be focused on, is downwards.

00:06:13.120 So, you know, something's become institutionalized to educate us.

00:06:21.440 I'm not sure it's brainwashing, but I wonder, frankly.

00:06:24.160 But we're being educated with information, using charts,

00:06:28.240 where people start telling us the population in the year 1800 was down here, one billion.

00:06:34.160 And these curves go up like this and they say, this is where we are now.

00:06:38.160 And then they stop.

00:06:39.360 And what they might even do is look upwards, implying that we're going up forever.

00:06:43.600 That's what I thought seven years ago.

00:06:45.520 I'm sure it's what my kids thought because the textbooks they use, they showed me, that's what they showed.

00:06:49.920 But we know that we're going to plateau because there's so few babies being born now.

00:06:54.320 We've known this for a very long time.

00:06:56.320 So anybody who wants to talk honestly about population will be telling you, yes, we went through this.

00:07:01.200 But we know it's going to maximize, going to plateau.

00:07:05.040 We're then going to become a much older planet with people, frankly, who are going to be, you know, in need of care.

00:07:12.240 And will not probably have the care that they need because workforces are going to shrink.

00:07:17.280 And then it's going to decline.

00:07:18.480 That's the real story of population.

00:07:20.480 And for many nations, another problem I have, frankly, is when people talk about total population.

00:07:26.000 This is nonsense.

00:07:27.360 What matters to you and me are our own countries, predominantly, or the countries we'd like to visit,

00:07:33.680 or our own communities, in fact, taking the total population of the planet.

00:07:38.400 Well, fine.

00:07:39.200 But we also need to be looking at what's happening under our own noses.

00:07:42.560 And for the UK, if I can just share with you something.

00:07:44.640 In the UK right now, there are around 900,000 people aged exactly 50.

00:07:51.200 I like that number because 50-year-olds will retire in about 20 years, so 900,000.

00:07:57.600 Last year, there were only 700,000 babies being born.

00:08:00.720 So there's a 22% drop already in the UK in terms of that ratio.

00:08:05.920 Now, in 20 years' time, whenever 50-year-olds go to retire, newborns will be the ones who are 0.99

00:08:12.400 finishing school just about to take the jobs in the workforce.

00:08:16.800 Countries like Italy are 55% down.

00:08:20.160 Germany is 36% down.

00:08:21.840 Japan is 55% down.

00:08:23.760 So, you know, when I look at that, you realize that life is going to change for so many countries,

00:08:30.000 and for young and all the like.

00:08:32.320 Like, I don't know why we're being told this absolute nonsense about population explosions

00:08:36.960 when that was a thing of the past.

00:08:38.880 You've touched very briefly on why this is not a good thing.

00:08:44.240 Apart from that, why isn't it a good thing?

00:08:48.000 Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, we need to prepare for it.

00:08:51.040 Now, let's say someone says it's good, someone says it's bad.

00:08:53.520 The world is going to change.

00:08:56.080 And I think anyone surely would want to know how the world's going to change.

00:09:01.280 I assumed that I was educating my kids for a future that was going to be similar to my generation.

00:09:08.720 You know, so putting them on the same path, the same education, same career path.

00:09:13.760 I would have expected a similar, hopefully, retirement path.

00:09:17.280 But when you realize that the structure of societies where typically there's been a much smaller number

00:09:24.000 of older people and a much larger size of workforce, that that is shifting to become what I call an inverted world, 0.99

00:09:30.720 where there's so many old people to take care of and a shrinking workforce, what does that mean?

00:09:36.480 Well, it means many things.

00:09:40.160 First of all, taxes are going to increase significantly if we're going to be able to keep the same level of healthcare for older people.

00:09:47.360 Something like I believe two thirds of all healthcare costs are devoted to older people.

00:09:54.960 So those are going to expand.

00:09:56.880 I don't know how the NHS is going to cope with that in the UK, never mind health services elsewhere.

00:10:01.840 But you've also got social security.

00:10:03.840 You've also got pension systems.

00:10:06.240 Most people think, I did too, that the money we take as pensioners, I'm not quite there yet,

00:10:13.920 but the money we will get is the money that we were paying while we were working.

00:10:19.200 But it's not.

00:10:20.160 The money we pay in towards pension systems in most countries today goes to pay for current retirees.

00:10:27.040 So any generation is expecting or needing to appoint younger generations to keep paying in to support those pensions.

00:10:35.760 So this is just an idea of the changes that we're going to be looking at.

00:10:38.960 There are many others as well.

00:10:40.240 So Francis, I'm not saying that the world's population is too small, too big.

00:10:46.720 I'm saying a change is about to happen.

00:10:48.960 And this change will last for the rest of the century.

00:10:51.600 It's going to be a very long, slow, and I think quite painful change.

00:10:55.120 So I just wanted people to understand that the world is not going to be the same for, you know, much of the rest of the century.

00:11:00.880 And so what are the reasons behind this?

00:11:02.560 Why is this happening, Stephen?

00:11:05.440 Childlessness.

00:11:06.080 Childlessness.

00:11:09.600 Whenever I started my research, I couldn't understand why no one had really been able to explain why birth rates have been falling in many nations at almost the exact same rate, starting at almost the exact same time.

00:11:30.400 So if you take Japan, around 1973, 74, there was a very sharp fall in birth rates.

00:11:38.720 Italy, it happened at the same time.

00:11:40.560 Germany, just a little bit earlier.

00:11:43.120 Many people have theories that, oh, in Japan, it's work-life balance.

00:11:46.080 They work too hard.

00:11:47.040 And that, I would say, is probably true.

00:11:50.000 But you couldn't say that of Italy necessary.

00:11:56.800 In Italy, it was blamed on something else.

00:11:58.320 It was blamed on youth unemployment.

00:12:00.640 Spain too.

00:12:01.760 Germany had other reasons.

00:12:03.440 But I couldn't believe that this was a big coincidence.

00:12:07.440 In fact, if you look at this trend, it started in these places at the same time and it spread throughout those regions.

00:12:15.840 It didn't ever go back to normal.

00:12:17.440 It kind of was a progressive thing.

00:12:19.520 It just spread across now the entire more developed industrialized world and now far into the developing world.

00:12:28.480 So the idea that there wasn't a common explanation was, to me, almost an impossibility.

00:12:34.560 So I set out to see if I could find a connection.

00:12:38.320 And it took a year and a half before I was even able to come up with an hypothesis.

00:12:42.080 And that hypothesis finally formed in a bar in Tokyo.

00:12:48.720 There's not many scientific hypotheses formed in the bars in Tokyo.

00:12:51.520 Or maybe there are.

00:12:52.160 I don't know.

00:12:53.840 After a year and a half, I noticed something strange.

00:12:56.720 I couldn't find all that many people who had no brothers and sisters.

00:13:02.800 Of course, some, but not that many.

00:13:05.520 And to have birth rates below, on average, two children per woman,

00:13:11.200 you have to have a lot of people either with no children or with only one child or a mix thereof.

00:13:17.920 And in this particular bar this night, I was there with some friends and there's other people coming.

00:13:22.080 And I said to myself, okay, tonight, I'm going to try and ask at least 10 people if they're brothers

00:13:27.120 and sisters. And if it's not more than one or two, you know, I think there's a thesis here.

00:13:32.000 I ended up asking 15 Japanese people. And I think one didn't have any brothers and sisters.

00:13:38.720 All the rest were two, three, four, one even had seven.

00:13:41.840 Wow.

00:13:42.400 And okay, I felt at that moment, I have to find a way to analyze childlessness in a way it hadn't

00:13:48.160 been done before. Usually the way we measure childlessness is waiting to people are 45 years old.

00:13:52.800 And that means there's a long lag and the analysis is a lot more difficult to do.

00:13:58.080 So that was my challenge then. And that's the one thing I was able to identify. Be clear.

00:14:03.920 I will say this, and please keep this in the edit. I will support 100% anybody who decides they do

00:14:10.400 not want children. I will be the biggest supporter. This is not about trying to coerce people to have

00:14:15.760 children who do not want. Cut.

00:14:18.080 But those people are the minority compared to, if you look in countries like Japan,

00:14:33.040 Europe, where this trend has been in place for many decades, less so in the US and other

00:14:38.160 countries that are still transitioning. But what you end up with in countries with very high

00:14:42.640 childlessness. So for example, right now in Japan, you have childlessness running around 35%.

00:14:49.680 In Italy, it's 40%. Around 80% of those people had planned to have children. So four out of five

00:14:56.720 people have planned to have a child and life took its course. And that's why I ended up calling it

00:15:02.800 unplanned childlessness. So the reason is unplanned childlessness. And then the question is,

00:15:09.280 why do people in the end not have the families they want to have? But that's your show.

00:15:16.560 Well, we'll get into that in a second. But let's first of all, just if we stick with the chronological

00:15:21.040 order of it, the initial triggers, which you're talking about, and Germany, it's the late 60s,

00:15:26.160 and other countries, it's the mid-70s. And you've talked, you talk in Birth Gap in the film about

00:15:32.640 economic triggers. So it's the oil shock of the 70s, and so on. Is that your contention,

00:15:38.880 that this is economically driven? Triggered. Triggered. Economically triggered.

00:15:42.960 Yes. I suppose the obvious question from where I'm sitting then is, I mean, I'm not much of a

00:15:49.600 historian, but I have studied some history. Like the oil shock of the 70s was not the worst thing

00:15:54.240 that's ever happened to humanity. You know, and human beings had went on and had children after

00:15:59.040 the Great Depression, they went on and had children after World War II, and during World War II, and all of

00:16:04.800 the terrible experiences that human beings have always had, they've always, we've always bounced

00:16:10.160 back. We've never had this issue as far as I'm aware of before. So why is essentially economic

00:16:17.360 disruption, why did that have such a huge triggering effect on this particular issue?

00:16:23.360 So it's a great question. And I don't cover this in a documentary, so let me go a little bit deeper.

00:16:29.520 And just to explain, I've lived in Japan for six years, but I've employed a researcher,

00:16:33.200 I've worked with academics there to look into the history of Japan around this time.

00:16:37.360 If you look at the early 70s in Japan, what was happening was many people were moving into cities,

00:16:42.720 getting new jobs, working for the car companies, electronic companies, things were looking good.

00:16:47.600 And around that time, things started to get more expensive. Rents started to go up.

00:16:53.680 More and more women were looking to work, but there are few kindergarten spaces. So there's tensions 1.00

00:16:58.800 in communities trying to balance affordability of apartments, along with finding enough kindergarten

00:17:05.920 spaces. But still, birth rates were relatively high. Then the oil shock hits suddenly. And Japan was the

00:17:15.200 largest oil importer in the world at the time. So their entire growth required oil. At that moment,

00:17:21.600 prices went up even more. Commodities you see in the documentary, shelves that were empty. This was a

00:17:28.160 stressed society anyway. Then something happened. And what clearly occurred was a deferring of parenthood.

00:17:39.040 It wasn't that people suddenly decided, okay, well, I'm not going to have children. It was more that people

00:17:45.280 decided, well, I'm not going to do it now. He's 25, 27. I'm going to wait till I'm 30. And that's the pattern.

00:17:50.800 So when we look at America, well, many countries actually, but to take the mortgage crisis of 07, 08,

00:17:58.560 you can look at America, you can look at Canada, Malaysia, Netherlands, even New Zealand. Around that

00:18:04.560 time, childlessness was hovering around 15%. So let me explain a little bit, if I can, on this as quickly.

00:18:12.720 What you see with childlessness are waves. Waves that happened when going back to the UK in the 1960s,

00:18:19.440 the most common age to have children was age 20 to 24. Thirty years later in the 90s, that had shifted

00:18:25.840 to 25 to 29. So it became natural to have children a little bit later. You wind the clock forward to

00:18:33.120 now, and that's 30 to 34 in the UK is the most common age for women to have a child. You then interject

00:18:39.600 some form of economic shock into that. And you're causing further delays into women's 30s, into women's 1.00

00:18:46.000 late 30s, that mean, frankly, women aren't able to have the children they want to have. So just to come 1.00

00:18:53.040 back to your point that, yes, during famines and wars, you're absolutely right. Those times in the past have

00:18:58.560 been times when basically societies delay having children, but because it was normal to have children

00:19:04.720 younger, at the end of the war, at the end of the pandemic, at the end of the crisis, women were

00:19:09.520 generally still young enough to be able to have the families they want to have. Today that's changed.

00:19:15.840 And look, and let's be really honest about this. We're not, women are being sold a lie.

00:19:21.440 They're being sold a lie of, you know, you can have it all. You can go out and work and

00:19:25.360 have a career and do all of this and then have kids later on in your 30s.

00:19:29.360 And the reality is, you're going to be far less fertile in your late 30s than you will be if you

00:19:35.520 have children in your early 20s. That question is going to make such a great

00:19:39.200 little Twitter short, mate. Just you go, the reality is, women have been sold down to the world. 1.00

00:19:44.080 Let me tell you, darling, what's going wrong.

00:19:47.600 And I have to be a little bit cautious here because...

00:19:50.000 Come on, it's called trigonometry. Just let it rip. 0.98

00:19:52.560 Yeah. So, in my words, if I can.

00:19:57.840 Yeah.

00:20:00.720 Keep the distance away from your inflammatory language.

00:20:03.600 Yeah.

00:20:04.160 Sorry.

00:20:07.520 You're not 100% wrong. You're not. You're not at all. But the way I see,

00:20:12.000 I don't think anyone's doing the selling. And I hope it's going to be easy to kind of

00:20:17.920 explain the reality that has not been shared up until now for whatever reason.

00:20:21.680 I think if you look at younger... I have three children who are now in their 20s. I think

00:20:28.240 young people have, and their parents, frankly, are of the belief mostly that if you get an

00:20:35.520 education or training, it's then a good thing, clearly, to get a job, to get a career, build on

00:20:42.720 that to a point of stability. And then maybe in your 30s, why not? What we're not aware of for whatever

00:20:48.800 reason is that women's fertility, A, falls much faster than expected. There's a lot of variability 1.00

00:20:55.200 in it. Some people, some women are very fertile to 40 or older. Some lose their fertility by age 30. 1.00

00:21:01.200 So, we don't know about that variation. They're there for the risk. Also, we don't know that the

00:21:06.320 quality of a woman's eggs. A woman is born with all of the eggs she will ever have in her life. 0.96

00:21:11.280 Women do not make new eggs. So, two things happened during that time, and it's covered in a documentary

00:21:16.720 of Kim Kardashian's fertility doctor included to explain how this happens. You lose both the count

00:21:24.560 of eggs, but you also lose the quality of eggs. And then a third thing happens, which is the ability

00:21:30.080 to carry a baby to term. The risks associated with that go up. So, to be honest with you, and you'll see

00:21:37.760 it in part two of the documentary, which is not quite out yet, a little bit in part one,

00:21:42.320 where I started asking women in their 40s and 50s without children, had they intended to have

00:21:47.840 children? And it was a very delicate subject. And I have to be, I have to say, people watching this

00:21:52.320 and the situation, these are people internally grieving the fact that they had never families.

00:21:57.840 And you see deeply emotional scenes. And it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

00:22:05.680 It's something that I think we should know more about as a society, just the fact that we've got

00:22:13.920 to be sensitive to people. So, just to give you an example, some people, perhaps many,

00:22:23.200 who don't have children in the workplace will see a colleague bringing their child to work or talking

00:22:29.280 about their children. Many of these people go to pieces when this happens. They'll go to the restroom,

00:22:34.320 they'll go to the toilet and just stay there. They'll go and have a walk. We don't realize,

00:22:40.080 certainly I didn't, the internal anguish that happens. So, to your point, society, I agree,

00:22:46.480 is not informing people, men or women, because men are trying to partner with women if they want kids

00:22:52.160 who are able to have children. Men also are in the dark here. And so, the question why that's happening,

00:22:59.120 I don't know. It's remarkable. We teach people so much about biology in schools, but we don't cover

00:23:04.560 this. So, it's got to change.

00:23:07.360 Well, you're right. I think that, and this is, I said it on Twitter a while back, and people got

00:23:13.040 annoyed with me, as they do whenever anyone brings this up. But we've got to a position where a lot of

00:23:17.840 people, but particularly in this case women, are going to end up in a position when they're not happy. 1.00

00:23:23.360 They're not happy with where they've ended up. And I'm curious, I mean, the economics of this,

00:23:28.960 I imagine, are significant because, you know, my wife, for example, right now, she's not back to

00:23:35.360 full-time work by any stretch of the imagination. And our son is a year old, and I don't think she'll

00:23:39.680 be back to full-time work for a long time. And she doesn't want to be back to full-time work for a

00:23:43.760 long time. But for a lot of people, that is not a position that they can afford. They can't afford to,

00:23:50.800 especially if, you know, both parents have a high-paying job, and they need that money

00:23:56.400 to maintain the lifestyle that they wish to have and that they're used to.

00:24:01.360 That's an economic difficulty that I think didn't exist in the past, when 40, 50 years ago,

00:24:07.760 a family of four could live on one person's income. Typically, the dad would go out to work,

00:24:12.160 the mom wouldn't, and they could live on that comfortably. And it wasn't as big a deal. Now,

00:24:17.120 economically, that's not viable, but also societally, that's not quite viable either. Like,

00:24:23.680 the choice of giving up a lot of money to stay home with the kids doesn't seem like

00:24:28.640 a very appealing option to a lot of people as well.

00:24:30.880 I think partly, I have to say again, that people don't want to have children. We have to just

00:24:37.040 accept that. I think the challenge is the conflict, then, for those who do want to

00:24:41.200 and are trying to find the right time. I think the best way for me to answer this is to say,

00:24:47.840 if we're going to find a solution to this problem, we've got to make it more flexible for people to

00:24:52.640 have what I'm calling educational pathways and career pathways that make it easier to do things

00:24:59.600 at the same time or to take breaks from one or the other. Why are we cramming all of our education

00:25:04.640 into the first three, four years? I still take classes, college level classes, because I like

00:25:10.400 to keep up to date with things. And it's refreshing to study something that you want to learn at the

00:25:16.720 time you want to learn it that's relevant to you. I think we need to make education more flexible so

00:25:22.560 that people are able to have children younger. And why not have people start their careers for the

00:25:28.080 first time age 30 or 35? We're living longer now. The idea of retirement, I don't know what the

00:25:34.560 French are thinking about right now, but retirement at age 63, is it 65? Yeah. 0.98

00:25:39.040 Yeah, it's going to be 75. The young people today watching this, you're not going to retire until

00:25:43.360 you're at least 75 to 80 years old. 100%.

00:25:45.600 Yeah. So why not start careers age 30 or 35 if you're going to have a 40, 50 year career anyway?

00:25:53.040 So I don't have all of the answers here, but I know the current structures that we have are

00:26:00.400 for sure not helping or are hindering many, many people.

00:26:03.600 And also the thing that we don't talk about as well is that women like to partner with people who 1.00

00:26:11.280 are, if not a similar level to them, education wise and earning wise, they prefer it if they're

00:26:17.600 higher. But then what happens if you get women who go to university? And by the way, 0.79

00:26:23.440 there are people, I'm in favour of women going to university and, you know, educating themselves.

00:26:29.440 Stephen, they're just jokes, right? You look so tense. Just jokes, mate.

00:26:32.960 Right. So, you know, so women going to, you know, education, they have, they come out, 0.98

00:26:37.520 they have this amazing career, they have this amazing job, and then they want a partner.

00:26:42.720 And then they realise that the partner that they want comes from a very, very small pool

00:26:47.600 in which a lot of women are competing for that small pool of men. 1.00

00:26:51.600 Well, that's right. So this is called hypergamy. It's, it's, it's absolutely true that women do 1.00

00:26:59.840 cross-culturally prefer to partner with men who are at least as successful, whatever that means,

00:27:06.400 as they are. And that's not going to change because that's part of who we are as a species.

00:27:12.240 Men don't mind. Men will marry down, but actually prefer less women who are more educated, 0.99

00:27:18.960 it seems to be. We've got to accept that that's a reality. Now, your point is absolutely right,

00:27:25.120 because if you look at colleges in the US right now, almost two thirds of people at US colleges

00:27:30.080 are women. Even in Thailand, it's 60%. It's, it's a global trend that women are focusing more

00:27:36.160 on education. This is a problem. I don't have an answer to this. In some ways, I have to say that,

00:27:41.440 you know, men need to be studying harder, you know, or not dropping out of colleges. I mean,

00:27:45.120 I heard recently the dropout rate for men at US colleges is much, much higher than women.

00:27:51.680 So this is another problem we have to confront. Maybe if you personalize it, you would say if,

00:27:57.760 if a woman wants to be sure of finding someone, you know, don't leave it until you're 35 and through 0.99

00:28:02.880 all your, your graduate education, et cetera, because you're right at that point in time,

00:28:06.160 there will be a very small pool of people who you might feel you want to partner.

00:28:10.400 Yeah, because that's the real challenge. And you know, you have to feel really sorry for these

00:28:15.360 women, particularly, you know, I have relatives of mine who are doctors. You, you work really hard

00:28:22.160 at school, you then go to university, then you then have to go through medical school,

00:28:26.480 you have to qualify. And by the time you've done all of your exams, you're in your early 30s,

00:28:30.960 mid 30s, and you've pretty much just started your career. And then you have to go,

00:28:35.040 oh, right, now I have to think about kids. It's, it's huge. It's huge. And you wonder,

00:28:42.560 what are we going to do to be able to actually overcome this challenge? And do we just need to

00:28:48.720 start talking more honestly about female biology? One of the interviews that we did was a young 1.00

00:28:56.560 German medical student. It didn't make the final cut of the documentary, but I will be including her

00:29:01.600 in some future coverage. I think she was 23, 24. And she had decided to take a year out of medical

00:29:09.920 school to have a child. And she was laughing with us. Yes, it's a struggle, but you know,

00:29:17.040 you should see what it's like to be a doctor and have a child. And she had decided that if she didn't

00:29:21.760 make that the right time for her, she'd probably end up being childless because she saw so many 0.96

00:29:26.960 older doctors who were childless. And she was making, she made it work. To be honest with you,

00:29:32.800 she was one of the happiest positive energy people. And of course, when you're 22, 23, 24,

00:29:38.080 you do have more energy for things like that. And again, I have to say, I don't want to pressure

00:29:42.080 people to have children younger than they want, but we have to make societies more flexible so that

00:29:47.440 those who might consider this are better able to do so. Well, look, none of us wants to force,

00:29:53.760 this is kind of, I think, part of the reason that we can't have this conversation the way we need to

00:29:59.920 is, you and us, to some extent, are very tense about coming across as telling other people what

00:30:06.480 to do. None of us, just to be clear, none of the three of us wants to tell women or any other human 0.78

00:30:12.640 beings how they should live their lives. However, we are also starting to see that some of the ways we've

00:30:18.880 been living as a society are not, generally speaking, creating the highest amount of

00:30:23.920 fulfillment, meaning, purpose, and happiness for people, right? And so we should be able to

00:30:29.120 acknowledge both of those at the same time. I think that's really, really important, actually.

00:30:32.800 And, you know, we make all the jokes about it to diffuse the tension, but I know exactly why you are

00:30:38.560 very careful about this, because it's a very difficult issue to talk about. And we'll come back

00:30:43.280 to talk about the issue itself in a second, but one of the ways that this difficulty of this issue

00:30:47.600 showed up recently is your experiences at Cambridge University. Tell us about that.

00:30:52.080 Or my lack of experience.

00:30:53.200 Your lack of experience, yeah.

00:30:56.320 So I was invited by a student at Cambridge University to give a presentation, to show the

00:31:01.600 documentary in a Q&A, and I was greatly honored. And any students who want to invite me to universities

00:31:06.480 anywhere, I'll try and be there. The student's name was Charlie Bentley Astor, who I didn't know at that

00:31:12.880 time, but I've got to know her quite well since. And she explained that at Cambridge University these

00:31:18.560 days, it seemed to be quite a thing to protest. And that she warned me, we might have some people

00:31:26.080 who were upset by the documentary. Well, when I first heard that, to be clear, I've screened the

00:31:32.560 documentary 40, 50 times, including to universities, international students, from various podcasts.

00:31:39.360 I think there's now over 15,000 comments that have been written about the documentary.

00:31:46.080 Not one of those comments or one of those prior events would have ever given me any reason to

00:31:51.040 think that anyone would want to cancel my documentary. Why? It's about life. It's about

00:31:54.960 people. It's people's voices. I don't even come up with a conclusion in it. I simply say, here is the

00:31:59.920 world and here is data, hard data, real people. And most of the people I interview are women. In fact,

00:32:07.040 the entire crew, other than me, there's about nine of us involved in making the documentary.

00:32:11.200 They were all women, except me. And it wasn't, I went out to try and find women to make this 0.99

00:32:15.440 documentary. Women gravitated towards this project because they want to also hear answers from other 1.00

00:32:20.880 people. So when Charlie told me there might be a few protesters, that was, well, okay. My first thought

00:32:27.600 was, I'd like to meet them. I'd like to sit down with them. I'd like to talk to them about why they're

00:32:30.800 protesting and talk to them about their lives and how the world's going to change.

00:32:35.920 What actually happened was on another scale. There were protesters in the street a week before

00:32:41.680 the event took place. Varsity Magazine wrote a hit piece on me challenging the documentary,

00:32:50.320 but giving no reason for it whatsoever. Yet no one ever contacted me. No protester said,

00:32:54.960 hey, Stephen, can you explain this data? They didn't even watch the full documentary. They only

00:32:58.880 watched the intro to it.

00:33:04.480 And what is the thrust of their criticism?

00:33:07.120 Well, the reason it was actually cancelled was St. John's College felt that there'd be too much

00:33:11.520 noise protest during exam time. So that was the excuse.

00:33:14.880 Well, that's the heckler's veto. But why are they heckling in the first place? What's wrong with

00:33:19.440 talking about this issue? They've called me anti-feminist, misogynist, bigoted, racist.

00:33:28.640 Racist?

00:33:29.120 Yes. And most recently, fascist. 0.99

00:33:32.800 Welcome to the club. That's what we all are now. Why? Okay, look, anti-feminist and misogynist, 1.00

00:33:42.400 I'm not saying you are, obviously you're not, but I can see how people can add two plus two and get

00:33:47.120 about 75, right? What does it have to do with racism?

00:33:51.200 It's ridiculous. I mean, clearly, people are just trying to use terms. As Charlie put it, 0.93

00:33:56.640 they're trying to intimidate other students and academics from attending this event. So by throwing

00:34:02.400 out these words, act or they're not, it's just a warning to stay away. So the question there goes,

00:34:07.760 these people don't know me. They don't know the documentary. There's something in the subject

00:34:11.760 matter they don't like. And I hear it might be to do with the definition of a woman. I think putting

00:34:17.280 the term mother and woman in the same sentence today is provocative to some people, perhaps.

00:34:22.000 That's what's been explained to me. So I'm a data scientist. For me, it wasn't just a cancellation

00:34:30.640 of the documentary. It was an attempt to cancel UN data. I mean, the data I gather is purely from

00:34:37.520 government sources. And it's an attempt to cancel the voices of the world, mostly from women. 1.00

00:34:42.320 And something's clearly very, very wrong in society. When universities were places where

00:34:48.240 people go to absorb new ideas and to reject them or accept them or change them, that even now in

00:34:55.680 universities, at least of all, Cambridge. So I'm actually going back next week. We're going to try

00:35:01.760 one more time before the end of the semester to screen it. I think I've been told if it's canceled

00:35:06.560 again, I'll become the most canceled person ever at Cambridge University because everyone else who

00:35:12.080 got canceled eventually went back and were able to kind of do their speech or whatever.

00:35:18.560 So we'll see what happens.

00:35:19.680 So I didn't know this part of it. I thought the reason that they were upset with your documentary

00:35:25.360 is, you know, you were telling women to get back in the kitchen. That was their interpretation.

00:35:29.760 But it's not. It's the mere idea that mothers are women, essentially. 0.61

00:35:36.000 To be honest with you, no one's given me a specific reason. I mean, even if you read farcely,

00:35:40.640 there's no specific reason why this documentary is in any way upsetting to anybody. So the interpretation

00:35:48.400 I've just given you is what I've been told that the group of people, the 90 people who were due to

00:35:54.720 come and protest, often protest against trans-related issues. And that's very sad. I mean,

00:36:00.320 these are people I actually want to reach out to, to sit down with, to talk about their lives.

00:36:04.560 And I hope I get that chance at some point.

00:36:07.360 That's because you haven't met them. Anyway, I'm just kidding.

00:36:10.000 But Stephen, moving on, there was this part of this, which I feel we're not talking about,

00:36:16.240 which is fertility levels are also dropping as well. So I was reading about certain studies

00:36:21.920 that were looking at male fertility and saying the quality of sperm in, I think it's something

00:36:27.760 like men in their twenties, is inferior to quality of sperm of men in their fifties.

00:36:34.240 And how much of an effect is that having on this particular?

00:36:37.440 This comes up quite a lot. And the answer is, if it is having an effect, we haven't really seen it

00:36:45.840 yet. It may be starting to be part of the data. We'll see in future. But one thing I'm very sure

00:36:52.960 of, that is not the reason for the start of this trend. This trend started in the late 60s and 70s,

00:36:58.800 and has basically been on a continuum since then. So applying modern or more recent

00:37:06.080 possible explanations doesn't work out. I get perhaps the most amusing one. I got a comment on

00:37:12.960 one of the sites that they thought Ronald Reagan was the reason for this whole problem when it started

00:37:19.520 in Japan in the 1970s. So people are often taking things that they hear that are more recent and

00:37:24.960 implying. I get this a lot. But now you have to find a reason that can explain this going all the

00:37:30.880 way back to the 70s, and to explain why it started in some countries before others. Only then can you

00:37:36.560 understand this.

00:37:37.360 Well, I feel like we still haven't quite got there in terms of our conversation here,

00:37:41.440 because we talked about the economic shocks that people experienced in those countries,

00:37:44.960 and that those societies that have seen a reduction in the ratio between earnings and the cost of

00:37:52.160 living essentially, right? It's become harder for a family to survive economically.

00:37:58.480 But I still feel like there's got to be some kind of cultural stroke psychological dimension to this

00:38:05.360 where we have become more risk averse. And I think we see that in other areas of life as cultures

00:38:10.560 generally. And I certainly would posit at least that the way we talk about climate change and the way we

00:38:17.760 talk about the future of the planet has an impact on how people feel. Do you know, the number of times

00:38:22.320 I've talked to young people, and probably at one point thought myself prior to really educating myself

00:38:28.240 about these issues properly, you know, that there is this sort of human beings are the virus narrative

00:38:33.920 that's going around. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's too many of us, we're causing too much

00:38:38.080 of a strain on the planet. Why would we bring another person into this world that's about to collapse

00:38:42.720 anyway? Like that is definitely out there as well. Do you think that's a contributing factor here?

00:38:47.600 I worry that that will be a contributing factor in the decade or two ahead, because I do hear that

00:38:54.240 more and more from younger people today. Frankly, birth rates are already so low, if that, you know,

00:39:00.720 that could put us really over the age if that becomes the case. And it's sad because, you know,

00:39:05.760 first of all, I don't think we should be ranking our crises. I'm as concerned about the planet as the next

00:39:10.640 person. The dialogue that we have around the environment, you know, frustrates me, frankly,

00:39:15.440 because we only seem to talk about certain aspects of it rather than, for example, technical solutions

00:39:20.560 that we should be talking about. We should be talking about everything if we're genuinely worried

00:39:25.440 about it. So, but the idea that whatever you think in terms of the environment, that someone can

00:39:33.600 say to somebody else, do not have children. That's morally wrong. You might want to say,

00:39:38.960 be careful how you raise your children, you know, in terms of consumption. Maybe that's okay.

00:39:43.600 But I've heard of situations, I've heard of professors in universities in the US telling

00:39:48.560 the classes they should not have children. And that's just shocking. That's beyond immoral to me.

00:39:54.560 If you were to say, let me bring in one of the other points about my findings. In all of these

00:40:00.800 countries, once a person, once a woman becomes a mother, family structure has not changed in decades.

00:40:08.080 So back to the US in the 80s, back to Japan in the 70s, the proportion of women in Japan having 0.99

00:40:14.080 four or more children was 6% in the 1970s. Today, it's exactly the same. Now, that was quite a shock

00:40:21.120 to me to find out, actually, once a woman has her first child, she's typically going on to have as

00:40:26.000 many children as it looks like she will want to have, because that structure just does not change.

00:40:31.840 But as a new father, just to interject briefly, that makes total sense to me. Because once you

00:40:36.160 have your first, it's like Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. Like, you're going to have as many

00:40:40.640 as you're going to have, because they're great. You know what I mean? For the vast majority of

00:40:44.640 people, it's just the experience transforms you. But it's getting people over that line is what you're

00:40:49.360 talking about. So the reason we are where we are is not that families have become smaller,

00:40:54.720 it's just there's way more people not having children at all. Yes. Right. So, but I still feel

00:41:01.120 like we haven't quite got to why that, my sense is my cultural and climate related explanation,

00:41:07.440 you feel is much more forward facing. But in terms of why we have dealt with these economic shocks and

00:41:14.000 the cost of living issue in the way that we have, do we have any sort of sense of why it is that for the

00:41:21.040 first time in probably human history, we're whittling down our own society. Do we have an

00:41:27.520 idea of what that is? Well, to go back to these triggers, the oil shock, the mortgage shock, etc.,

00:41:33.040 also in Korea, the currency crisis of the mid-90s, there's multiple examples of this. What you find

00:41:40.000 is a very quick transition to high childlessness, but it never goes back. It locks in. So the question,

00:41:45.520 to talk about the culture around this, societal norms change in some way that lock in a new

00:41:54.400 pattern. And that pattern is one where people have children later. So I think what's happened is, frankly,

00:42:02.880 as societies, and this is cross-cultural, I mean, you look at Japan as a culture, you look at Europe,

00:42:08.480 different parts of Europe, the US, even Brazil is suffering from the exact same problem, even Russia

00:42:13.040 Russia, and Ukraine. So you look at all of these places, and you find that across all these cultures,

00:42:22.080 once people start delaying parenthood, it gets locked in. And I equate this a little bit. In Japan,

00:42:30.080 we have words for this. The person who was hired a year or two before you is called Senpai. So

00:42:38.240 everyone has a Senpai, and Senpai has a Senpai. And then the people below you are like Kohai.

00:42:43.600 So it helps me with this terminology. If you are particularly a woman, and you've just turned 30,

00:42:49.120 and you're Senpai, and Senpai, Senpai have not had a child yet, you're feeling as well,

00:42:54.320 it's probably not my time yet, because I might be perceived as, you know, so you're not even thinking

00:42:59.520 of it. And what you might be thinking is, well, when Senpai, Senpai, boss's boss, has a child,

00:43:06.480 then there'll be a promotion opportunity. So I'm going to wait for that. So I think the way, you know,

00:43:11.120 the world kind of welcomes people to kind of delay parenthood around this. So it becomes a cultural

00:43:19.120 phenomenon, but yet it's cross-cultural, if that makes sense.

00:43:23.120 That makes perfect sense. So essentially, once you've had the transition from having children

00:43:30.560 young to not having children young, it becomes a locked-in cultural phenomenon that people

00:43:35.200 essentially memetically take on from others around them. And then you add to that the economic

00:43:40.240 rationale for, well, I'll get my career sorted first, then we'll have kids. And because of that,

00:43:45.600 as you say, 80% of the women who end up being childless did not intend to be childless.

00:43:50.480 In countries that have gone through the full transition. So in the US, there's a lot of

00:43:55.600 women right now hoping to become a mother who are aged, you know, 35 to early 40s. And just 1.00

00:44:02.960 statistically, you just look at the chances are not high. I mean, that's one other fact, just I

00:44:08.720 love sharing if I can, that in every country except one, and the one is Israel, I'll talk about in a

00:44:15.440 moment. In every country I've looked at, women turning 30 without a child only have a 50-50

00:44:21.840 chance of ever becoming a mother. 30. In Israel, it's 31. It's just a little bit older. And when I

00:44:30.960 ask people on a survey, what age do you think it's 50-50? 40 was the most common answer. So again,

00:44:37.920 we have this mismatch about what is possible. We talked about fertility, but fertility is not the

00:44:43.120 biggest reason people aren't becoming parents. It's because they're not with a partner at that

00:44:48.480 right time. So they're working on their career, 32, 33. Maybe they do have a partner at that time.

00:44:54.000 Now everything's good for one of them, but maybe the other partner isn't quite ready.

00:44:57.840 Or maybe there's a breakup or a divorce, or maybe you actually don't have a boyfriend-girlfriend

00:45:02.000 partner at that time. Not having a partner at the right time is the biggest reason. And that's

00:45:07.360 what I wanted to tell people at Cambridge was that, you know, one of the comments in I think

00:45:12.800 Varsity Magazine from one student, a medical student, was that they don't need to be told

00:45:16.880 whether they want to have children or not. What I want to tell them is actually it takes two to have

00:45:21.280 a child. And finding a partner at the right time is therefore really important, and most people skip

00:45:25.600 over that. And it's also the fact as well, you know, we're talking about the 60s and population

00:45:33.040 collapse. I mean, the pill must play a massive part in this, surely?

00:45:37.600 No.

00:45:39.680 Correct.

00:45:41.840 So you would say so. And the counter argument to this is that in Japan, the pill was not made

00:45:49.360 legal until 1990.

00:45:51.840 Really?

00:45:52.800 Really. And do you know, even today in Japan, only 3% of women take the pill. Three.

00:46:01.520 It's incredible. I didn't know that to quite recently.

00:46:06.240 But let's go back. So the pill, I guess late 60s, 70s became commonplace across much of the

00:46:12.160 industrialized world. And we, like you, many people, me too, I'm sure in the past would have

00:46:17.040 said, oh, the pill has enabled women to... Well, in Japan, there was no pill. What happened is there

00:46:22.560 was a huge increase in abortions there. So with or without the pill, women were able to decide 1.00

00:46:28.160 whether they want to have children or not. So you have to put that... And by the way, I have to say

00:46:32.000 again, a caveat. I do not want to have any say on whether a woman wants to have an abortion or not.

00:46:37.280 That's her choice. Not my business. So the fact that there's the pill alone, you know,

00:46:44.240 that's what I said no to. But for sure, women have a lot more control over their biology. 1.00

00:46:50.320 But unfortunately, we are not educating women well or men on how short fertility cycles can be.

00:46:58.640 And it's also as well that now women are being fed this, you know,

00:47:03.120 this story that... And look, it works for some women as well, where they go, 1.00

00:47:07.440 well, you know, technology is getting better and better. You can freeze your eggs. I've heard

00:47:11.920 certain companies say to female executives, oh, we will freeze your eggs and we will pay for it, 1.00

00:47:18.560 which you think sounds great. And you're going, hang on, that's really dystopian.

00:47:22.720 And it's not just executives. It's young recruits, young women being brought from university

00:47:27.360 are being sold this as a benefit. And when I first heard of egg freezing,

00:47:31.920 I thought this was a great idea. I thought this is part of the solution.

00:47:34.560 Um, but the more I thought about it, when I realized that people are just delaying parenthood

00:47:39.280 until they don't have a partner or they don't have energy. Um, in a way, I love the way you

00:47:44.240 pointed at me. I haven't slept for a year. I haven't looked as good for a year. Don't point at me when

00:47:50.080 you say they haven't got energy. So I've got 40 year old dad energy. That's what I've got.

00:47:56.640 I'm sure you do. Um, I, you know, um, now I've lost my track.

00:48:03.200 No, I'm so sorry. You were talking about, uh, egg freezing. Yeah.

00:48:06.800 People delaying parenthood to a point where they're old like me.

00:48:10.960 Well, I think it's dangerous to assume that egg freezing will, will on mass solve this problem.

00:48:16.800 It may solve it in a very few cases. And that's wonderful. Um, I've got a fertility doctor in Tokyo

00:48:21.680 who's just, you know, working with me right now to say, how can we let people know that that's really

00:48:27.360 might be a last hope resort that may or may not work. So I think we have to put everything in

00:48:31.920 perspective and, um, you know, if technologies get better and people are able to have children

00:48:36.640 later in life, well, that's great, but we're just certainly not there yet.

00:48:39.440 Steven. So your, your key takeaway message and correct me if any of this is incorrect

00:48:44.160 is you don't have as much time as you think. Yes.

00:48:47.040 That's, that's one of your key messages. Yes.

00:48:49.120 And if you get to 30 and you haven't got kids, your chances, statistically speaking,

00:48:54.880 of having kids at 50, 50, at that point, my wife and I, we had our first son at 39,

00:49:00.080 very late, probably have another one. Uh, just I, my, my wife comes from a family, 0.99

00:49:04.320 like her granddad was born as like the 15th child and his mom was like 58 at the time.

00:49:09.680 So she's maybe got genetically, uh, in a better position, but you don't have as much time as you

00:49:15.440 think you don't, right. You don't have as much time as you think. So if you want to have children,

00:49:19.600 basically you need to find a partner and try and make it work by around that time.

00:49:23.680 If you haven't already, if you want to be a mother or if you want to be a parent,

00:49:27.440 it's about prioritization. It's what's important to you. And if someone decides, you know what,

00:49:31.760 I'll take the risk. I'm going to, you know, that's fine. So I don't want to force people.

00:49:35.360 I don't know if they're saying that. But that's not what I was saying.

00:49:37.520 Yeah, right. I was saying, if you want to be a parent, that's kind of the strategy you want to follow.

00:49:42.240 Now, societally, uh, the question for me is we, we touched on some of the impacts earlier,

00:49:48.800 but I actually think we didn't quite go as deep as we could because when you talk in,

00:49:53.120 in the movie, one of the stats you gave, which I was like, whoa, you said there are more adult

00:50:00.480 diapers being sold in Japan than baby diapers already.

00:50:04.560 Already? Yes. It's been like that for quite a while, actually.

00:50:08.080 That is terrifying, isn't it? Yes. Um, so, you know, I live in Japan and the reason I'm there is

00:50:16.240 because I'm passionate about this issue. I'm actually passionate about trying to help save

00:50:20.720 Japan. Uh, one of the great things there is that everyone in Japan intensely knows about this topic.

00:50:27.440 Um, it's on the media every day, the government are, you know, making, uh, regular, you know,

00:50:34.560 policy changes to try and address it. So it's a place where I hope if anywhere in the world can

00:50:38.640 solve it, it might be Japan first. Um, because you're right. And another statistic, um, in Japan, 0.57

00:50:48.000 this data goes back a few years, but within the last five to 10 years, the average number of people

00:50:54.240 waiting for a care home was around 400,000 people. Uh, when you get to an age in Japan 0.83

00:51:01.120 of needing a care home, you can't take care of yourself. You're living alone.

00:51:04.800 That is the moment you can put yourself on the list to wait for a care home. So you need a care home,

00:51:09.440 but you can't be on the list until you need it. Why? Because there aren't enough care home spaces.

00:51:13.760 The average time I think from then to wait on a care home place is three years. So you've got people

00:51:19.040 who literally are unable to take care of themselves and able to address themselves and able to do

00:51:23.200 anything living for three years before that place in the care home opens up. Japan is a template for 1.00

00:51:29.200 much of Europe. Um, can I say, let me say it here. I haven't said this before, but, um, you know,

00:51:35.200 I'm from the UK originally. I didn't have a vote here, but, um, because I don't live here, but I am pro

00:51:42.160 Brexit. And at the time of Brexit, um, I, you know, contacted some newspapers here to say, look, I think we

00:51:50.320 should do a, an article using some of the maps I've created to show how grim the situation is in

00:51:55.760 Germany, Italy, Spain, much of Europe, because people need to know just how fast Europe's going

00:52:00.320 down the hill economically, as well as in terms of the care of the elderly there. And, uh, I, I,

00:52:06.800 I used the slogan, if you like, I was using the term, it's safer to be out because of what's going to

00:52:12.000 happen in Europe with this rapid aging of old people that that's already well underway. And, um, 0.75

00:52:18.720 so it's not just Japan, it's on, it's on our, you know, or on your shores here in the UK. Um,

00:52:24.720 and it's catching up so much, so fast in so many parts of the world.

00:52:29.280 And I think what people probably haven't been able to quantify, but it's undoubtedly the case,

00:52:34.640 is an aging society changes, uh, everything. It changes whether people start businesses or not.

00:52:41.840 It changes whether there's innovation in, in society, because as we all know that once you

00:52:46.000 get to a certain age, you, you become less flexible and less willing to take a risk. I mean, that's why

00:52:51.360 young people are much more risk hungry because that's the time you're supposed to be trying things 1.00

00:52:56.800 because you've got time to fail. You've got time to make a mistake. You've got time to do that.

00:53:00.960 Economically, militarily. I mean, it just seems to me that this is a huge issue, as I said to you at

00:53:08.000 the beginning, that people don't even understand the implications of, let alone the implications of

00:53:13.440 the implications, the second order, third order, fourth order consequences.

00:53:17.280 Yeah. We haven't gone into too many of those, but just a very obvious one is that we're going to have

00:53:22.560 too much housing for the number of people in our societies. And today in the UK, that's probably

00:53:28.160 hard to understand because there's seen, it seemed to be the other way around at the moment, but that

00:53:33.040 will change. And, you know, these are societies therefore that will have decaying communities

00:53:38.560 where houses will become desolate, where communities will become desolate. I feel young people will 0.99

00:53:45.920 mostly move away from those communities. I think certain towns will become what I call magnet towns that

00:53:51.200 people gravitate towards, mostly younger people, which become quite expensive. The older people will be 1.00

00:53:56.320 left in the decaying towns without enough health care. Taxes are going to go up for everybody. And then

00:54:02.000 you take national debts. So most countries, Japan certainly, all countries, I want to say, have got

00:54:08.160 significant national debts. And these tend to get larger rather than smaller. Well, if you have a

00:54:14.240 shrinking workforce to pay the interest on those, I mean, you're going to have a real pressure on the younger

00:54:20.080 people to continue to have anything like the quality of lifestyle that we've had before.

00:54:26.640 So communities are going to look different. And yeah, I really worry about loneliness and all of

00:54:35.680 this. You know, we haven't used that word yet, but that is a core word that I think that we need to

00:54:40.960 apply. It's not the right word. People who don't find a partner, people who don't have children when

00:54:49.520 they wanted to have children are likely to face a level of loneliness. And there's many support groups

00:54:55.920 online already for this. You can see, you can read the stories, you can even read the stories. I

00:55:00.640 imagine after this podcast, you'll see comments coming up of people in this situation who, you know,

00:55:06.160 who left it too late dealing with a level of loneliness. But then you take older people. 0.99

00:55:11.200 So there's a community in Japan where I visited where 50 years ago, it was filled with younger

00:55:16.720 families. And today it's only older people, but it's mainly older women living there alone because 1.00

00:55:21.440 partners, men tend to die younger. So you have this situation where we went to the local grocery store

00:55:28.480 and we hear that these women come out maybe once a week to do the shopping and they're spending 1.00

00:55:32.720 forever talking while they're paying for their groceries, because that's the only person they're

00:55:37.120 getting to talk to weekly. And we've got to do something about this. Clearly, we can't let people

00:55:42.080 remain in their apartments without a sense of community. But we're going to have to think about

00:55:46.880 so many issues, so many problems that come out of this that we're not scratching the surface of yet.

00:55:51.840 And Stephen, is there, sorry Francis, just I wanted to ask this one other question on this.

00:55:56.880 Other than sub-Saharan Africa, where people are very happily breeding away and enjoying big 1.00

00:56:01.920 families and all of that. And there's fewer childless women, I think. Am I saying anything

00:56:07.120 that's incorrect? Yeah, but I don't think they're enjoying having bigger families.

00:56:10.000 If you, the reason people have large families is typically because of extreme poverty. Yes.

00:56:18.640 Once you put in running water and opportunities for education, that changes completely. Right.

00:56:24.400 So what you can say is in sub-Saharan Africa, where people are having fewer children year by year,

00:56:30.240 it's quite significant. But still there, you have extreme poverty in many areas and that's causing

00:56:35.440 larger families. I think it's a better way to put it. Okay, that's a more accurate way of putting it.

00:56:39.760 Is there an antidote? I've spoken to some people from Israel recently and they're telling me,

00:56:44.240 you know, Jerusalem is the best place, there's kids everywhere, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:56:48.240 Is Israel, does Israel offer some kind of solution? Like where can we look to for some answers to this?

00:56:54.960 So there's two places that are interesting. One's Israel, one's Hungary. Israel is a very stratified 0.61

00:57:01.120 society. I've never been there. I hope to go this year, but I can see from the data very clearly,

00:57:05.520 you have quite high childlessness and rising childlessness. It's about 20% there now,

00:57:11.600 but you have 15% of mothers having six or more children. Right. The Orthodox, I imagine. 0.92

00:57:19.280 People tell me that. Yeah. But there is something interesting in Israel. The most

00:57:25.840 common family size in Israel is three children. And that's quite rare. Usually it's two.

00:57:32.640 So is there a learning there? Perhaps, again, I don't ever want to tell someone to have more

00:57:37.360 children than they naturally want, but I don't think we're going to get 15% of mothers in other 0.97

00:57:41.920 countries having six or more children. That's just not realistic. Hungary is the other one where they have 0.89

00:57:46.320 a lot of policies. For example, in Hungary, if you're a young couple, you can get a loan to buy a house

00:57:54.320 and the loan will increase depending on how many children you effectively commit to up to four.

00:58:01.600 So you're going to get a bigger loan to get by a bigger house without even having had your first

00:58:07.440 child. If you don't have four children, well, you have to pay some of the money back. So you only,

00:58:14.240 you actually, you only get the benefit of this loan when you actually have children.

00:58:19.520 Now the interest, and I'm not saying that maybe that's coercive, but what is interesting about it

00:58:23.840 is the actual structure of family size and Hungary has not changed at all. Like everywhere else,

00:58:27.760 you don't have any more people than before and wants to become a parent having one, two,

00:58:32.320 three, four children, but you do see a significant reduction in childlessness.

00:58:39.280 Quite significant. And it's too early yet to say that this is causal,

00:58:44.240 but it's certainly something I think we should look at. Is there a way to, you know, through loans,

00:58:49.440 encourage people to take away economic vulnerability, which is there for people to say, look, okay,

00:58:54.640 if you do have the children you think you're going to have, you know, here's this and you have to pay

00:58:58.000 back some of it if you don't. Again, I don't want to comment necessarily on what's good or bad here

00:59:02.800 and specific policies, but those are two countries. I could talk about Russia very briefly if you

00:59:08.240 wanted to. Of course. Because Russia is also sided with us having policies that have somewhat

00:59:14.000 successfully encouraged people to have more children. And Russia's birth rate did dip very low

00:59:18.160 and then did go back up. But if you look underneath this, up until 95, the most common family size in

00:59:26.000 Russia was one child. Over half of families were having only one child. And I don't know why that 0.99

00:59:34.640 is. But from 95 onwards, that started to normalize, normal mean become more similar to other countries,

00:59:41.760 where two was the most popular and the number of people having only one child fell sharply.

00:59:46.400 So it wasn't really an increase in overall birth rates. It was a reduction in people only having

00:59:51.040 one child. Whereas right now in Russia, birth rates are just falling through through the roof

00:59:55.520 since around 2015, I believe it is. Births, I think, are down. It might be 30%. So, you know,

01:00:01.760 all of these countries that people look at and go, oh, Russia did something good here. It's never as easy

01:00:06.320 as that, or it's rarely as simple as that. And do you think as well, part of this problem is,

01:00:10.800 and Constantine has actually mentioned it more in passing than anything else is society,

01:00:15.840 particularly Western society is very anti-natal. So whenever I hear you talk about South Korea,

01:00:22.480 you talk about, and correct me if I'm wrong, 0.8 is a replacement rate in South Korea.

01:00:28.320 Yes.

01:00:29.040 I was reading about South Korea the other day when I was researching for this interview.

01:00:34.080 They have child-free zones in, you know, I think it's in an island in South Korea.

01:00:42.000 And they say, you know, children are allowed in coffee shops, restaurants, et cetera, et cetera.

01:00:46.880 And then you go, and then you wonder why people don't want kids.

01:00:52.400 South Korea, I did film there with several people from Korea up here. It's a culture where there are

01:00:59.280 issues, work-life balance. And, you know, women do get paid less than men. There are certain cultural

01:01:04.720 issues you would point to. The term that's used in the media is birth strike, but none of the women I

01:01:10.640 actually talked to in Korea were saying, well, I'm on strike. So I think that's a cute media term.

01:01:18.800 The reality is women in Korea are starting families very late, much later than other countries. And

01:01:24.400 they're not achieving the same family size as other countries would do. And Spain's very similar as

01:01:31.760 well, by the way, in terms of the number of people starting families really late. So in those countries,

01:01:36.000 you find very high proportions of families with only one child again. I hadn't heard of the child-free

01:01:41.680 island. I must research that, but it sounds horrendous. And you know, the anti-natalism,

01:01:45.600 it is out there. I, you know. Oh, 100% it's out there. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You meet so

01:01:51.520 many people. I'll be honest with you. I used to be like that. Before we had our son, I used to find

01:01:57.520 kids annoying. I do. And I think the fewer of them are around, actually, the more annoying you find them,

01:02:02.880 because they become the anomaly. It's like almost everybody's had experience of getting on a plane,

01:02:08.160 seeing a baby, going, oh, for fuck's sake, I'm not going to get any rest. I'm not going to get any 0.99

01:02:12.160 sleep. Whereas I think if everyone was having kids around you, it would be a whole different

01:02:18.160 experience because it's like, well, it's just part, like you get on a plane, there's going to be some

01:02:21.760 kids on there because there's going to be some men and some women. It's like part of the thing.

01:02:25.280 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So I think there's an awful amount of it around.

01:02:29.920 Do you know the thing that irritates me most? There's a term used a lot, and we haven't used

01:02:36.880 it here. I don't want to ever use it, but it's putting the word child and free in the same,

01:02:43.120 yeah, I call it the CF word. And the CF word is used commonly in the media. It's used in some

01:02:49.520 academia. But the word free means free from something harmful. And the idea that children

01:02:55.920 are harmful. So you put the word free after disease free, germ free, debt free, mortgage

01:03:01.920 free, things that are universally negative, not something that you want and you don't want,

01:03:08.960 not a selective thing. So the idea that there's people out there who would use the CF term,

01:03:16.120 you know, as a parent, I find it offensive. The idea that I might want to be free from my children.

01:03:20.860 Or if a teacher in school was saying to my children, when they're younger, that they are

01:03:29.500 child free, what would that do to a child hearing from a teacher? Oh, maybe my parents also want to

01:03:34.700 be free of me. I mean, it's damaging to children. So this is where I see this, well, not exactly

01:03:41.000 subtle, quite obvious, antinatalism creeping in everywhere. And I think that term just has to

01:03:47.040 be called out for what it is. Well, I think on a more positive level, I always try and talk about

01:03:53.600 how much I enjoy being a parent just to get the idea out there that it's actually a lot of fun.

01:03:58.560 It's not something you want to be free from. It's something for if it's right for you, like you want

01:04:03.120 to make that happen. So we're going to go to our supporters only questions in a second on Locals.

01:04:08.960 And they've got a bunch of great questions for you. But before we do, just so wrapping it up,

01:04:13.980 if I'm watching this, I'm 23 years old, I'm a young woman, I want to be a parent. I do want to

01:04:21.500 be a parent at some point. What are you telling me? Start thinking from now about how that's going

01:04:29.340 to best happen for you. Don't wait until you're 28, 32, 35. And be aware that you will have to make

01:04:37.980 compromises, almost certainly. Something will have to give. And if you don't make a decision for

01:04:43.960 yourself to have a child, unplanned childlessness will be the consequence. You may have your career,

01:04:48.540 and that might be fine. You may have friends, other extended family, that's fine. But the thing

01:04:53.280 that is most likely to give is family, if you don't in some way start to consider it from age 23.

01:04:59.120 And if I'm a policymaker listening to this, because there are some of those too,

01:05:03.440 what are you telling me? Show this documentary in all your schools.

01:05:07.040 Or start education about this in schools. Because people need to know about fertility 1.00

01:05:13.780 challenges from high school age. They need to know that there's only a 50-50% chance of becoming

01:05:19.080 a mother. And men that's only a little bit older too. People need to know that when they're planning

01:05:23.980 their lives. Policymakers spending more money on enabling people to have children may be a good 0.99

01:05:31.080 idea. More kindergartens, that might be good, but those things don't fix the problem. They never have,

01:05:35.280 and I don't think they ever will. It's about information.

01:05:38.300 It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Before we move to locals, our final question is

01:05:44.000 always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

01:05:47.820 Well, unplanned childlessness. I know I've already said it. But I'll say unplanned childlessness in a

01:05:56.040 broader context here. We've talked a lot about women becoming unplanned childlessness, but it happens

01:06:01.140 to men too. And how it happens to men is we think we can wait and wait and wait, because technically,

01:06:08.100 mostly, we're able to have children later than women. But do you know what happens? Age 45, you're 0.95

01:06:13.960 competing with a 35-year-old version of yourself to find the same woman who's able to have children.

01:06:19.460 So there are actually more childless men than childless women. And I think men need to understand

01:06:25.220 that this applies to them just as much. That makes a lot of sense. Stephen, where can people watch

01:06:31.000 The Birth Gap? So birthgap.org is a website we have. Part one of the documentary is on there. The other

01:06:38.740 parts are available for members only because we're working with some streaming services right now to

01:06:44.340 look at possibly having them brought out later this year. Part one is also on YouTube. I caught it on

01:06:49.680 YouTube and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. So I recommend everybody check it out there and continue

01:06:54.540 to follow it. And we will go over to locals. Join us there. He says, I agree with David Attenborough when

01:07:02.080 he says all our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder and

01:07:07.520 ultimately impossible to solve with even more people.

TRIGGERnometry - June 25, 2023

The Depopulation Bomb： Stephen J. Shaw

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