TRIGGERnometry - We're Not Having Enough Kids - It's A Disaster - Stephen J. Shaw

00:00:00.360 So I looked up some data and I thought, oh, this is going to be interesting.

00:00:04.020 What I didn't expect to find was a pattern across 39 nations that explains everything.

00:00:10.840 And I mean everything.

00:00:12.580 There is a singular reason for falling birth rates.

00:00:16.640 Japan seems to be at kind of the forefront of this as does South Korea.

00:00:21.160 On average, every day, two schools close in Japan.

00:00:25.320 And that's been going on for 15 years.

00:00:27.220 Stroller sales for pets are now outstripping strollers for kids.

00:00:32.260 That's in South Korea and I believe it's true in Japan too.

00:00:35.060 There are people out there trying to block messages.

00:00:37.580 And one of the messages they're trying to block is educating women about fertility. 0.63

00:00:42.580 A woman turning 28 in the UK has a 50-50% chance of ever becoming a mother at 28.

00:00:49.500 There are some people who literally want humanity to die.

00:00:53.040 This is a civilization ending.

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00:01:58.660 Stephen Shaw, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:02:04.520 Great to have you on.

00:02:05.720 Thanks for the invite.

00:02:06.700 Yeah.

00:02:07.060 Well, obviously, we talked with you, I think it was last year, about your documentary Birth Gap, talking about the fertility crisis across the world now.

00:02:15.300 Not just the Western world, but across the Western world, which is basically the fact we're not having enough children to replace the population as we have now.

00:02:23.040 We talked about many of the challenges that poses.

00:02:26.960 I think the stat that really stood out for a lot of people from that interview is in Japan where you live, more adult nappies are sold than baby nappies.

00:02:37.780 So there's more nappies for people who are in the final stages of life than for babies.

00:02:42.120 And this is a thing that is increasingly being replicated around the world.

00:02:47.180 And you now have some new data and you've done a lot more research into this.

00:02:51.380 So talk to us about where the world is in respect to all of that.

00:02:55.320 Just remind people.

00:02:56.200 And then what have you discovered about why it is that way?

00:02:59.800 Well, that's just one thing about nappies. 0.59

00:03:02.040 I believe it's now the case for strollers as well.

00:03:05.160 I think stroller sales for pets are now outstripping strollers for kids.

00:03:10.420 That's in South Korea and I believe it's true in Japan too.

00:03:14.560 So things aren't getting better anywhere.

00:03:16.400 And you're right, what's happening in the Far East, I'm still based in Tokyo, is absolutely playing out.

00:03:22.080 So it was two years ago I was here.

00:03:23.660 And at that time, I would say fertility came into the mainstream press once or twice a year.

00:03:30.140 I mean, it just wasn't a thing.

00:03:31.720 US too.

00:03:33.320 It's now almost daily.

00:03:34.760 So the transition of awareness is the one big change I notice.

00:03:40.420 And that's a good thing because one of the reasons for making the documentary was to make people aware of what's actually happening.

00:03:46.920 But you're right, over the past two years, I've been doing more research because I still wasn't convinced that we really understand this crisis.

00:03:55.220 My first paper, now peer-reviewed, I can say that.

00:04:03.580 I tend to make documentaries first and then do the peer review after, which is probably the wrong way around to some people.

00:04:08.640 But I think this is so important that people need to be aware of certain things.

00:04:12.680 And the peer-reviewed research really shows that mothers in Japan and the UK are having around the same number of children as 1970 mothers.

00:04:23.060 Let's just park the category of women because there's no such thing as an average woman. 1.00

00:04:27.040 Debatable category nowadays.

00:04:29.160 To me, it's like a Schrodinger's cat.

00:04:33.480 People are not going to like me for this.

00:04:34.660 It's the idea of a cat that's half alive and half dead.

00:04:38.240 So park that analogy.

00:04:39.740 But the idea of an average person, mother or father, is someone with a child and childless at the same time.

00:04:45.500 We measure these average people.

00:04:48.960 Demographers do it.

00:04:50.140 And it's held a lot of people back, I think, in fully understanding exactly what's happening.

00:04:54.680 So original research separated people who are having children.

00:04:59.460 We've got so much data on women. 1.00

00:05:01.280 It's terrible, really.

00:05:02.320 I'm always talking about women and mothers.

00:05:03.860 I really want to talk about men more, and I hope to do that here.

00:05:07.020 But looking at the data for women, if you become a mother, 1970s Japan, 2025 Japan, you're going on to have around the same number of children. 0.99

00:05:16.280 UK too.

00:05:16.880 In the US, mothers are actually having more, from 2.4 to 2.6.

00:05:20.820 So this is not to do about parenthood.

00:05:22.820 This is to do with the transition into parenthood.

00:05:27.120 But I felt, well, from my first research, that's as far as you could go.

00:05:32.640 That it was obvious parenthood was being delayed.

00:05:35.680 So I had this category, delayed parenthood.

00:05:38.740 People doing other things first and running out of time.

00:05:41.100 What I didn't expect to find one layer deeper was a pattern across 39 nations that explains everything.

00:05:53.920 And I mean everything.

00:05:55.000 So I'm now on camera, on trigonometry, for the first time saying there is a singular reason for falling birth rates.

00:06:03.340 And I'll either be laughed at for that, or people might look back and think, oh, that's interesting.

00:06:09.780 I hope it's the latter.

00:06:12.520 So if I can take you through for a moment.

00:06:14.580 Last June, I was in Kyoto, Japan.

00:06:17.240 And I'd just finished all the data analysis for the first paper.

00:06:24.260 Literally just finished it.

00:06:26.940 And I went out for an evening.

00:06:28.820 And a friend that was due to meet was double booked for a birthday party.

00:06:32.080 So I had an evening to myself.

00:06:33.200 And I do what I'd like to do on Friday nights.

00:06:35.340 Let's do some more data analysis.

00:06:36.840 And I decided to do only one thing, which was, OK, let's just prep the data for the next paper, which is going to be about the probability of being a parent by age.

00:06:46.940 That was always in my mind.

00:06:49.780 And I threw this into a visualized dashboard data tool.

00:06:56.880 And the age of parent had become a curve.

00:06:59.280 I'll not go into too much now, because you may have more questions first.

00:07:01.960 But I'm going to share with you that the latest research is what I call vitality.

00:07:06.360 And it shows that the age of parenthood can predict birth rates with very high accuracy.

00:07:13.620 But it's not your age.

00:07:14.780 It's everybody else's age. 0.97

00:07:18.400 Well, it's other people are the problem, you see.

00:07:20.820 It doesn't matter.

00:07:21.460 That's helpful.

00:07:23.280 It doesn't matter if we decide to have a child younger.

00:07:26.740 In the overall average of things, someone having a child will replace someone else not having a child.

00:07:34.460 All balance is out.

00:07:36.560 What I mean is it's a societal thing.

00:07:39.000 These curves center around an age where everybody is tending to have children.

00:07:45.380 And trying to move that forward or backwards just because a group of people decide, well, we're going to have kids earlier.

00:07:51.680 Great if they do for them.

00:07:53.100 But the whole challenge we have now is to do with the age of becoming a parent.

00:07:56.980 And that's a big problem.

00:07:58.160 Well, just to understand clearly, what you're saying is if you look at societies and you measure the average age at which people become parents,

00:08:07.920 that will tell you what the fertility rate of that society is going to be. 0.99

00:08:11.460 You can derive it in two or three rather simple steps.

00:08:14.380 OK, but I'm a little bit confused about you say that why that's a single explanation, because there will be causes of that average age increasing over time.

00:08:28.140 A number of them, I imagine, not just a singular one, right?

00:08:31.380 So some of them will be economic, some will be cultural, social, I imagine, right?

00:08:35.580 So I try and think of analogies, and some of them are good and some are not.

00:08:41.580 So let's see.

00:08:43.880 Imagine you're a fish, let's say a salmon in a river, a fast-flowing river.

00:08:50.380 Let's say one day some bears come along.

00:08:52.540 Not good.

00:08:53.900 So all the fish move downstream.

00:08:56.880 They find a new home there.

00:08:58.620 And the fishermen come along and think, what's happened to all the fish?

00:09:01.620 And then they go and they find the fish.

00:09:03.160 But it's not as nice where they are now.

00:09:04.560 We want to move back upstream.

00:09:06.440 Oh, we know the problem now.

00:09:07.560 It was caused by bears.

00:09:09.020 So let's just get rid of the bears.

00:09:11.020 That was the trigger.

00:09:11.760 The bears were the trigger to moving the fish downstream.

00:09:14.580 Right.

00:09:15.040 Getting the fish back upstream is a whole different challenge.

00:09:17.460 So you're right.

00:09:19.180 And what we see is major social turbulences, crises, recessions, causing delayed parenthood if you have not had your first child.

00:09:34.020 If you've already had your first child, there's almost no effect.

00:09:37.320 So it delays parenthood.

00:09:38.840 So we're moving downstream of when people would have had children before.

00:09:43.620 So the triggers need to be separated from, you know, resolving the triggers now would be like taking the bears away when they're no longer the problem.

00:09:53.680 Well, that's a very specifically framed metaphor.

00:09:55.580 Forgive me for interrogating it as much as I am.

00:09:57.540 But it implies the way this works is you can't move back.

00:10:04.580 Some people might say, I'm just thinking it through with you, Stephen, not trying to argue with you at all, that if you remove the conditions that cause people to delay parenthood.

00:10:16.000 Well, the reason I'm asking you is, for example, right, my wife and I had our first son at 39.

00:10:20.780 I know for a fact we probably would have had them earlier if our material conditions had been different, if we'd bought our flat earlier, if I was making more money earlier, if et cetera.

00:10:35.540 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:10:36.540 Right.

00:10:36.700 So if I go back to that time when I was 35 and I had the income that I had now or the physical, you know, security of owning a property or whatever it might be, we may well have had a child earlier.

00:10:51.460 So if you remove that economic constraint from Constantine at age 35, we may well have had kids then.

00:10:57.820 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:10:58.960 Sure.

00:10:59.120 And to go back to that evening in Kyoto, once I called up this chart, I was up to three in the morning in disbelief for the reason that this curve, which I'll explain, is symmetrical without bumps.

00:11:14.220 So what I mean, if you look at the age of parenthood, motherhood and fathers, we now have some father data.

00:11:19.460 My full expectation up to that evening was you'd see a delay in parenthood, some people having children, young, of course, and then maybe mid-20s, you would kind of have a slope going up.

00:11:32.820 And then maybe around 30, there might be another uptick.

00:11:36.120 And then there'd be another uptick.

00:11:37.760 Some of you would start to go down, but there'd be another little uptick, mid-30s.

00:11:41.100 And then IVF, you would definitely see all the progress in terms of technologies.

00:11:44.980 And you'd also say, well, if you go back to 1970, it would be different, but it would be smoother then because maybe there was closer to an average parent back then.

00:11:55.860 Most people were marrying at the same time, having kids at the same time.

00:11:59.400 So I even doubt myself that this would be a curve that starts smooth and then shows all this bumpiness as people, through autonomy, decide whether to have a child at 35 or 39.

00:12:12.820 But what I saw was a smooth curve.

00:12:14.980 In 1,539 data sets.

00:12:18.280 Very slight perturbations, very slight for periods of time.

00:12:22.420 I stared at that screen.

00:12:23.580 I wrote an email to myself that night.

00:12:25.620 I don't think I've ever done that before, ever will.

00:12:28.140 Because I wanted to remember the moment.

00:12:30.360 So this is a symmetrical curve centered around the age.

00:12:33.440 And today, let's say it's around 30.

00:12:35.120 Starts around 20, goes up almost perfectly, a perfect bell curve, what we call a Gaussian curve, with a formula.

00:12:40.960 It's a formula for it.

00:12:41.820 The email to myself said, we're all the same.

00:12:48.780 And what I meant was, it's a toss of a coin for us all by age.

00:12:53.420 Whether we want things or whether we have money.

00:12:55.480 The money you may have had constantly in younger years.

00:12:57.440 You may have spent to, you know, take a few more vacations or do other things and then wait.

00:13:06.160 I thought the data was wrong.

00:13:07.880 To me, this was impossible.

00:13:09.600 I went back to the source of data.

00:13:11.180 Confirmed that it's not national databases.

00:13:13.200 Verified it against other sources.

00:13:14.700 Went to the CDC in the U.S.

00:13:16.600 U.S. is interesting, by the way.

00:13:17.780 The U.S., I'll just state now, U.S. is multiple curves.

00:13:22.820 Asian-Americans, perfect curve. 1.00

00:13:25.620 African-Americans start starting younger. 0.91

00:13:28.500 And if people were to say in the U.S., why are so few Asian-Americans and African-Americans, black Americans, you know, having kids?

00:13:37.040 Well, you can see in the data, Asian-Americans are having kids five to ten years later than African-Americans.

00:13:45.020 So this curve, to try to explain, I call it the vitality curve.

00:13:53.020 The desire to have children, I think, is bumpy.

00:13:56.900 I think there are people at those ages, when they get through college, two years of career, when they get to 30, when they get to 35.

00:14:03.520 I think there is bumpiness in the desire of kids around certain ages.

00:14:09.060 But there's a greater force that overrides everything.

00:14:13.000 So to put it in context, when you model this, again, 39 economies.

00:14:21.280 I have to say economies because it includes Taiwan.

00:14:23.940 It's a wide, diverse set of countries in East Asia, North America, almost all of Europe.

00:14:30.140 When you put all this together into a database, all of this data, you get the same smooth curve and you get predictability that around 94% of birth rates are related to that central age, that vitality curve.

00:14:48.640 Only 6% relates to taxes, family policy, the economy, culture, anything else.

00:14:54.660 There's some exceptions to 6%.

00:14:56.220 You can tweak it a little bit up and a little bit down.

00:14:58.800 But to me, the takeaway for policymakers is that if you ignore the average age of parenthood and only focus on helping everybody have children, the chances of success are small.

00:15:14.840 And I'll say one more thing, and this is an irony to me.

00:15:17.620 The more you do to help people have IVF or delay parenthood in any way, the lower the curve goes.

00:15:26.940 So overall, IVF, of course, great for many people, of course.

00:15:30.920 But the more you kind of encourage later parenthood, this curve started like this and anchored at a young age because people are still having kids and teenagers, so it's anchored.

00:15:42.280 And as it stretches, you take the life out of society.

00:15:46.420 Can I give you an analogy?

00:15:50.480 It'd be better than the fish one.

00:15:53.440 Imagine times gone by, maybe my parents' generation, where in a town, people would go to a dance hall.

00:16:00.980 And that was the only place to meet people, realistically.

00:16:04.820 And the dance hall's open from 8 until 11, and everyone's there at 8 o'clock, which you don't want to miss out.

00:16:11.580 And the first hour or so is gossip, and who's brought their cousin from another town, and has there been a breakup?

00:16:16.760 And the conversations start, and then by the middle of the night, the dance floor, everything's flowing, there's lots of energy.

00:16:23.140 And towards the end, people start drifting home, and it's less likely that any new connections will be made.

00:16:29.020 But it's condensed, everything's out.

00:16:30.800 But everyone's on the same page at that same moment in time.

00:16:34.400 So imagine the dance hall owner thinks, well, this is amazing.

00:16:37.900 I'm going to extend the hours.

00:16:39.140 I'm going to open at 7.

00:16:40.400 I'm going to stay open until midnight.

00:16:42.280 But there's still only the same number of people to come.

00:16:45.180 There's not an extra body of people you're pulling in.

00:16:47.860 So what happens, some people come at 7.

00:16:50.540 But some people get bored and go home at 10.

00:16:52.460 Some people have dinner first and come later.

00:16:55.580 There's never that one central moment.

00:16:57.440 You've stretched out the energy, and you don't get that one moment.

00:17:02.460 And I imagine in that situation, let's say you're dancing with someone, and you think, okay, this is interesting.

00:17:07.980 And then some new people arrive at 5 to 10, and your head turns and thinks, wait a minute, there's something new.

00:17:13.840 I need to consider that.

00:17:15.160 At which point your partner knows you looking elsewhere, and he or she's gone somewhere else.

00:17:19.460 When you have a concentrated time span, when everyone's on the same page, it is easier, in technical terms, there's less entropy, less disorder, when people are pair bonding, matching at a younger age.

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00:18:50.900 Some say the bubbles in an aero truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.

00:18:55.420 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.

00:18:59.340 Rich, creamy, chocolatey aero truffle.

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00:19:04.420 It's mind bubbling.

00:19:06.260 Stephen, you know, when I was watching the doc and I was reading your data, it reminded me of a book that I read a few months ago called Adventures in the Screenwriting Trade by William Goldman.

00:19:15.340 And it's about the movie industry.

00:19:18.200 And he wrote Bush Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

00:19:21.120 And he said in 1982, the blockbusters were aimed at 16 to 24-year-olds.

00:19:29.900 So all the blockbusters in the late 70s, early 80s were aimed at 16 to 24-year-olds.

00:19:35.060 Because he said at the age of 24, people were getting married, they were having kids, they weren't going to the cinema.

00:19:42.380 So all of the, oh, those blockbusters would be aimed squarely at that target demographic.

00:19:48.300 Now imagine a blockbuster being released nowadays.

00:19:51.900 It wouldn't be 16 to 24-year-olds.

00:19:53.840 If I were to sue a movie producer, I'd be like, well, 16 to 35, maybe 16 to 40.

00:19:59.400 Well, that's why you've got a 60-year-old Tom Cruise in Top Gun Maverick, right?

00:20:02.920 Yeah.

00:20:03.100 How old he is, maybe not 60.

00:20:05.000 Yeah, no, Tom Cruise is about 60, yeah.

00:20:07.540 So you've got all these people identifying with an aged Tom Cruise.

00:20:11.820 No offence, Tom.

00:20:13.380 And in that analogy, I think what happens is you've actually got more people.

00:20:17.980 Because there's more people to watch those movies over a wider age span.

00:20:21.500 The issue with pair bonding is there aren't any extra people that were stretched out the hours.

00:20:27.180 So it would be like stretching the hours of blockbuster.

00:20:31.340 But the same number of people coming in and not just the energy might be taken out.

00:20:36.120 I'm sure the analogy fully holds.

00:20:37.860 But this is my biggest worry now.

00:20:40.420 This is what keeps me awake at night, including last night.

00:20:47.120 Time moves forwards, just like a river.

00:20:51.140 It's easy to delay parenthood.

00:20:52.940 We all, okay, not this year.

00:20:55.100 I can make sure.

00:20:56.040 That's fine.

00:20:57.960 But if we're to go back, if we are, if we are, it kind of means creating this turbulence where you're trying to, you're almost trying to tell all the over 30-year-olds,

00:21:09.180 like, you go and do your own thing, date with each other, figure it out, while you're trying to have some.

00:21:14.260 And I never use the word encouragement.

00:21:16.580 It's up to people to have kids if they want them.

00:21:18.460 I mean, I'll say it here and now.

00:21:19.700 No one should force anyone to even contemplate children.

00:21:24.100 But there are many young people who do want family.

00:21:26.660 And given the risk of unplanned childlessness, but having those two things at the same time, I've seen it done once in Hungary in a limited way, where you have had policies that have created this bubble in 25-year-olds and younger having children in Hungary.

00:21:44.940 And that's probably the most interesting thing happening in demography right now.

00:21:49.680 Okay, there's an example.

00:21:52.200 Hungary's overall birth rates have gone up and have not settled back down again.

00:21:56.220 But that's not the most important thing to me.

00:21:57.940 So there's a bubble that could be interesting for the future of younger people starting a family.

00:22:03.940 And what you do so beautifully in the documentary is you explore the real impacts of childlessness on countries.

00:22:13.540 And we'll talk about South America because with my background, I actually found that quite shocking.

00:22:17.840 We'll talk about that later on in the interview.

00:22:19.580 But the Japanese lady who you met, and you took her back to the town that she grew up in.

00:22:25.940 And in the early 70s, it had been this vibrant town where there were schools and kids' playgrounds.

00:22:32.760 And then you went back in, I think, in 2021, 2022, whenever it was.

00:22:38.480 I mean, talk about that.

00:22:39.800 It was horrific.

00:22:40.560 And it was actually a suburb of Tokyo.

00:22:45.040 You know, it's 40 minutes on the subway line.

00:22:49.100 So it's technically Tokyo City, which people would think is this 30 million booming place with too many people.

00:22:58.060 So this is my Japanese language teacher.

00:23:00.940 And she told me for a long time the suburb where she was brought up.

00:23:04.320 And I knew that she'd left that suburb when she was 12 years old.

00:23:08.280 Her family moved elsewhere.

00:23:09.200 So I looked up some data.

00:23:11.400 And I thought, oh, this is going to be interesting.

00:23:13.060 I think the suburb has completely changed just looking at the residents' ages.

00:23:17.340 So I persuaded her.

00:23:18.560 I waited until I had a film crew in town and persuaded her kindly, Emmy Sensei, to go with me.

00:23:24.680 And I kind of knew what she was in for.

00:23:26.760 But she didn't.

00:23:28.160 So she walks into this playground.

00:23:31.100 And she's smiling.

00:23:32.860 There's where I used to play.

00:23:34.120 And I used to climb here.

00:23:35.440 And she's just filled with joy.

00:23:37.480 You can see it.

00:23:39.200 And then she comes to an alleyway that used to be filled with shops.

00:23:43.720 And they're all closed.

00:23:45.060 Every single one's shuttered.

00:23:46.820 And she just says, shuck.

00:23:49.420 And you just see what's happened here.

00:23:51.900 Because you can't see inside apartments who's there.

00:23:56.220 Old, lonely people mostly.

00:23:57.520 Well, I know it's old, lonely people.

00:23:59.080 Because the one shop that was open, the one store, is a pharmacy.

00:24:03.380 And the pharmacists are 80 years old.

00:24:05.840 Husband and wife.

00:24:07.900 And they confirmed that everyone, well, as they put it, everyone's old.

00:24:13.480 And it's mostly single women living alone. 1.00

00:24:17.460 Because men die younger.

00:24:20.540 And the grocery store.

00:24:24.920 Mother and son run it.

00:24:26.620 The mother would be on the till. 0.98

00:24:28.300 And she liked doing that.

00:24:29.280 Because many of the elderly people who come by, she's the only person they get to talk to once a week.

00:24:35.500 And they delay and delay paying their bills and chit-chat.

00:24:38.060 And then one day they don't come back.

00:24:40.200 The scene you're talking about, Francis.

00:24:44.080 Yeah.

00:24:44.600 You know, it's...

00:24:45.840 It was a chilling moment in the entire documentary.

00:24:50.440 And there were several.

00:24:51.020 But we found some locals outside this pharmacy.

00:24:54.920 And they were talking amongst themselves.

00:24:56.500 And my assistant, Mie, got to talk to them.

00:24:59.260 And they're saying, no, no, don't say this.

00:25:01.180 Don't say this.

00:25:01.700 Don't mention.

00:25:02.140 But one person told us that the week before, an elderly woman in her 90s.

00:25:08.180 Without children, had thrown herself off the roof.

00:25:11.420 From loneliness.

00:25:14.440 And then we were told, that's not uncommon.

00:25:17.600 Right.

00:25:18.260 Right there.

00:25:23.940 She fell off.

00:25:26.500 Because she was lonely.

00:25:30.840 I don't think we know what loneliness is like in our younger years.

00:25:34.820 What is loneliness?

00:25:37.440 Not being connected with the world.

00:25:40.160 We can't sit there on that sofa and observe someone sitting there, depressed, day after day after day.

00:25:48.180 Yeah, and you know, I talk...

00:25:52.760 It's probably my first time talking about this scene in any detail.

00:25:57.200 Well, I don't know how we do anything about that.

00:26:03.480 Unless people start caring for older people in a way I don't think we do anymore. 1.00

00:26:11.380 And these bills are being passed around the world about assisted suicide.

00:26:14.900 I think they're just terrible.

00:26:17.540 Maybe well-intended.

00:26:18.780 Sure, I can empathize with some unfortunate people where that would be a preferred choice.

00:26:27.700 I remember flying back to Tokyo and sitting beside two young Japanese students.

00:26:33.840 Girls in their early 20s.

00:26:36.000 And if you end up sitting beside me in a plane, we're going to be talking about birth rates.

00:26:39.620 You know, that's for sure.

00:26:40.180 But the young woman sitting beside me was on her way back home after studying, I think, in the UK.

00:26:46.640 And I explained she was on her way back to her house, excited to see her parents.

00:26:50.980 And I said, oh, you know, the brother, sister, yeah.

00:26:52.880 And then she mentioned her grandparents.

00:26:56.060 And she said, oh, yeah, my grandparents still live with us.

00:26:58.400 Well, that's good.

00:26:59.060 You've got community.

00:26:59.880 And then she kind of welled up in tears.

00:27:01.540 And she said, why are they still here about her own grandparents?

00:27:14.940 And obviously, she was doing chores.

00:27:18.720 Obviously, she was studying.

00:27:19.760 Obviously, she was imagining all the things she would have to do to take care of her grandparents.

00:27:23.160 But to verbalize those words, to me, in some way, what stuck with me, those words may not often be spoken, but they might be thought.

00:27:36.960 Or they might even be hinted at to a point where elderly people in nations where assisted suicide is possible start feeling guilty.

00:27:45.840 Or, you know, I'm a burden.

00:27:47.320 Why am I here?

00:27:49.060 I can sense it.

00:27:50.200 And then communities building this expectation, well, you shouldn't be a burden.

00:27:55.780 And we all think when we get to that age, that that's the done thing.

00:27:58.540 Now, what does that do to any civilization, any society where we, you know, that becomes the end?

00:28:05.880 So this whole area of, I call these communities, and it's not just Japan.

00:28:13.560 I went to one in Germany as well.

00:28:15.040 They're everywhere.

00:28:17.060 You don't see them in the center of the city.

00:28:19.120 You know, you go out of cities in many countries and you'll find them.

00:28:22.700 I call them the Esther lands.

00:28:24.960 Like lands built for yesterday.

00:28:27.920 And they're too big now.

00:28:29.320 There's too many vacant houses.

00:28:30.880 Sure, not in the trendy places.

00:28:32.620 You know, that's where the house prices go up.

00:28:34.440 But not in the rural areas or even the suburbs.

00:28:37.480 You know, I worry about that a lot.

00:28:39.100 And, I mean, like I said, the dock is brilliant and incredibly powerful.

00:28:44.280 And that was one of the moments that really hit home with me.

00:28:48.500 The other one that hit home with me particularly was the amount of schools that were closed.

00:28:55.660 As somebody who used to teach and you're being surrounded by kids and the energy that kids bring and the liveliness and just seeing you in a deserted playground.

00:29:07.740 And then you said that school closed in 2006 and you showed the photograph of a boy being taught on his own.

00:29:16.580 It made me feel an almost visceral pain.

00:29:22.140 Yeah.

00:29:23.300 Yeah.

00:29:26.100 So, you know, we talk a lot about Japan.

00:29:29.440 It's at the bleeding age.

00:29:30.700 But the rest of us are not so far behind.

00:29:32.800 Already in the UK, schools are closing in some areas.

00:29:35.300 It's becoming more and more on the radar.

00:29:37.020 But, yeah, I mean, that one photo to me, you're right, the last student in this elementary school.

00:29:41.860 And, you know, so Japan, something, on average, every day, two schools close in Japan.

00:29:51.680 And that's been going on for 15 years.

00:29:53.320 It's 5,000, 6,000 now.

00:29:56.220 Schools aren't just schools.

00:29:57.860 They're hubs of the community.

00:29:58.980 Like you say, the energy is not just within the classroom.

00:30:02.100 It's all around the classroom.

00:30:04.420 And you take a school away from a community.

00:30:06.840 And I've seen that happen.

00:30:07.760 So let's say you have two towns, maybe 5, 10 miles apart, 5, 10 kilometers, whatever.

00:30:15.320 And there's only enough children for one school.

00:30:17.640 So a decision's made.

00:30:19.860 Okay, we're going to keep this school.

00:30:22.140 We can just bust these kids. 0.99

00:30:24.500 Solution. 0.97

00:30:25.240 No.

00:30:25.940 What happens, slowly, the families start to buy houses in this town or move there.

00:30:32.120 Suddenly, fewer people want to live here.

00:30:33.800 And you end up with elderly people left here. 0.99

00:30:35.860 And there may be a few kids still getting that school bus.

00:30:38.840 Meanwhile, this town's still got a bank and somewhere to repair your car and buy groceries.

00:30:44.260 This one ends up with nothing.

00:30:46.520 I went to such a town, pretty central Japan, last year.

00:30:53.380 There's one cafe.

00:30:55.360 So one cafe.

00:30:56.540 Maybe a town that would have had 200, 300 people.

00:30:58.660 Not big, but one cafe.

00:31:00.500 The cafe opens once per month.

00:31:03.740 They have a day to all go to the cafe.

00:31:10.100 So these fading societies, you know, it's terrible.

00:31:16.920 And we talk about fading societies and obviously Japan, because Japan seems to be at kind of the forefront of this, as does South Korea. 0.95

00:31:27.380 The part that I found shocking, as someone with a Latin American background, is you were talking about South America.

00:31:34.860 You were talking about Brazil.

00:31:36.960 I think, what was the stat?

00:31:38.400 Is it 1.64 replacement in Brazil?

00:31:41.140 I mean, I found that mind-boggling.

00:31:44.460 This is a Catholic country where fertility is celebrated.

00:31:49.460 And, you know, when I spent a lot of time, I'm not in Brazil, but in Venezuela, it seemed to me that I was surrounded by children and, you know, young people.

00:31:58.980 And it was a vibrant, energetic society.

00:32:02.000 Yeah, I think that shocks most people.

00:32:03.220 I actually spent three weeks filming in six countries just because I had to see it, because I knew people wouldn't believe it.

00:32:09.600 And yet, if you go back to Italy 40, 50 years ago, it would have been the same.

00:32:15.700 No one would have believed Italians would stop having big families and birth rates would crash.

00:32:20.060 Now it's happening in Latin America, and it's about to happen. 0.59

00:32:22.400 It's already well underway in India, particularly southern India.

00:32:25.460 It just takes us time to notice.

00:32:27.600 You don't really notice that people aren't having kids.

00:32:29.200 Well, change is nothing from a tent, a few schools closed, but not a big deal in the initial phases.

00:32:34.340 It takes time for us to notice, which is part of the problem.

00:32:37.540 But, yeah, Latin America, Latin America has a bigger problem than the West, much bigger problem, because the West and the Far East got wealthy before they got old.

00:32:53.440 Japan's got reserves, huge national debt, but it's got reserves for a while.

00:32:59.200 And perhaps they can use those reserves to help re-engineer society.

00:33:03.120 Brazil doesn't have reserves.

00:33:05.540 You know, still today, in these countries, the pension systems are geared up for very large families compared to the number of retirees.

00:33:15.120 And the experts I interviewed there, including one, you know, well, a doctor who's now into looking at gerontology, is it?

00:33:25.640 Care of older people. 1.00

00:33:26.420 Mm-hmm.

00:33:26.920 And the fear in his eyes and voice, talking about the future of elderly people in Brazil.

00:33:38.420 So what's happening in Latin America is what happened in Europe and the Far East 20-plus years ago.

00:33:46.120 It's popping up in the numbers now.

00:33:47.520 The real impact will be 20-plus years' time, and India is on the exact same path. 0.91

00:33:51.640 So this being a worldwide problem, let's come back to the conversation we started with, which is, I guess, implied and implicit in what you're saying, to some extent, is the idea that the way we got here is not necessarily the way we'll come out of it, in that even if we address some of the reasons that this has happened, that won't take us to where we want to go.

00:34:13.380 Right.

00:34:13.560 Can you talk about why that is, first of all?

00:34:16.780 Yeah.

00:34:17.400 So we have this central tendency, this vitality curve, and it's there, 1,539 data sets.

00:34:26.980 So a year in a country put together, massive.

00:34:29.800 Which shows that as the average age of parenthood gets older, people have fewer kids.

00:34:35.760 That's basically what it shows.

00:34:36.620 Overall.

00:34:36.820 Overall.

00:34:37.160 Overall, in a very predictable way.

00:34:38.760 Okay.

00:34:38.960 So that's equivalent to tossing a coin 1,539 times, and it coming up heads every time.

00:34:46.920 Okay.

00:34:47.280 Don't bet on the next one being a tail.

00:34:49.280 Mm-hmm.

00:34:49.740 So we have to assume whatever the reason for this curve.

00:34:52.640 I've got my theories.

00:34:54.100 I think it's linked to pair bonding, matching up.

00:34:57.260 But it's there.

00:34:58.840 Now, if you take, let's say, average age 30 is common in many nations right now.

00:35:06.660 South Korea, 32, 29, 30 is common.

00:35:09.300 Mm-hmm.

00:35:10.180 If you were to do things like put more money in young parents' pockets, if you do things that open more daycare, baby bonuses, all sorts of things that people think of.

00:35:20.500 Well, gender, you know, men doing more at the home, more paternity leave. 0.94

00:35:26.100 Let's say we solve all those things.

00:35:28.040 Mm-hmm.

00:35:28.740 We're now living in a perfect world.

00:35:32.160 That central age is anchored at that point.

00:35:35.480 If you were to pull it forward, so you're at that peak point now at 30.

00:35:39.580 We've got to move the peak earlier.

00:35:42.360 But you're already 30.

00:35:43.960 So you need to create some new bubbles.

00:35:46.580 A solution can only emerge.

00:35:50.500 If a new bubble emerges, that allows the people older than 30 to continue doing things as they would have for a time, while something new, a new blossom, if you like, emerges.

00:36:02.300 Now, I don't know if people actually really will choose to have children younger.

00:36:06.660 If they don't, we've got a real problem.

00:36:08.860 This is a civilization ending, but that curve is so locked in with no examples of really how to move it other than hoping for a second bubble at a younger age.

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00:38:02.320 Investing is all about the future.

00:38:05.900 So, what do you think is going to happen?

00:38:07.900 Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point.

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00:38:12.980 I hope we don't go cashless.

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00:38:17.700 Technology, companies, solar energy.

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00:38:33.760 Well, this is where – sorry if I'm harping on about the same thing, but this is where I come back to the economic argument.

00:38:38.700 Because I don't know if this is true.

00:38:42.400 And you're right.

00:38:43.320 I think one of the things I definitely observe is that the average age of people getting together into a serious committed relationship seems to be increasing.

00:38:52.900 And I have a lot of friends in America now who are in their 20s who are all married and about to have kids because that is kind of part of their worldview.

00:39:02.920 But they are kind of the exception, at least globally.

00:39:05.540 But, you know, in the 70s, you still had, to some extent, the one-earner household where the man, stereotypically speaking, would go out to work.

00:39:17.140 He could feed the entire family off his income.

00:39:20.640 His wife could afford to be at home with the kids. 0.96

00:39:23.900 And now that is just much more difficult to attain for people.

00:39:27.020 So I would say that probably quite a lot of young people that would be happy to have kids if that vision was available to them, which it isn't.

00:39:36.120 So wouldn't solving that problem – not that I know how to solve it – but if we solved that, wouldn't that turn this all around?

00:39:41.680 I'm not saying that these things aren't important.

00:39:44.640 But I am saying there's no evidence they'll affect birth rates.

00:39:49.020 But we've never – we've not seen that economic reality be reversed.

00:39:53.700 It's only getting worse.

00:39:54.560 It's only getting harder for people to get on the housing ladder.

00:39:57.360 It's only getting harder for people to survive on a one income, right?

00:40:01.840 Yes.

00:40:02.280 But if you go back to, you know, 70s, 80s, there was a time when things were getting better.

00:40:07.320 And you can look at different recessions.

00:40:08.580 And does it affect birth rates?

00:40:11.080 No.

00:40:12.920 More people weren't having kids in the Reagan-Thatcher boom years?

00:40:16.580 So Reagan-Thatcher boom years.

00:40:18.560 So we're talking now the 80s, I think, really.

00:40:20.580 The average family size in the UK was the same.

00:40:25.380 In America, it was 2.4, so it's actually gone up.

00:40:28.980 Childlessness was lower in America at that time.

00:40:32.880 But no, this is something really quite locked in.

00:40:35.740 But if I could – I understand.

00:40:38.860 I have this conversation.

00:40:40.360 I think my eldest son won't mind mentioning him.

00:40:42.680 He got married recently and living in central London, he and his wife focused on careers.

00:40:49.580 You know, they tell me similarly that people, if they had more money.

00:40:53.280 But what seems to happen is that when people do have that bit more money, they think, great, let's go enjoy it for a year or two.

00:41:01.440 And let's have kids later.

00:41:02.140 So – and there are many examples, counterpoints.

00:41:06.380 So you'll take somewhere like south-east of the UK, where house prices are going through the roof right now.

00:41:14.100 And that's the problem.

00:41:15.940 Well, you look at Scotland, and Scotland's got one of the lowest birth rates in the entire UK.

00:41:20.960 Scotland doesn't have this in the rear.

00:41:22.420 So there's imbalances in logic.

00:41:25.540 I've got a – we all know – is that Occam's razor?

00:41:28.840 Is that the saying where I think the most simple reason is probably the right one?

00:41:35.940 I've got maybe something to pair with that in subsets here, which is the common grievance razor, you might call it.

00:41:45.380 So I go around the world talking about this, lecturing about this.

00:41:48.740 And when I'm in Japan, people are certain if men did more in their home, birth rates would go up.

00:41:55.040 Really?

00:41:55.700 Oh, certain.

00:41:57.900 I gave a talk to a technology conference there recently, and this lady came up and thanked me and said,

00:42:02.380 but really, you do know if men did more at home, that would solve the problem here.

00:42:06.280 And I come to the UK, and it's house pricing.

00:42:08.540 And at different places I go, they've got local grievances.

00:42:11.980 So if – so the razor really –

00:42:13.880 But the trend is the same everywhere.

00:42:14.980 Everywhere.

00:42:15.260 But that little razor is – if you're blaming local grievances for things you're unsure of, they're probably not the right answer.

00:42:23.500 Okay.

00:42:24.300 In that case, what do we do?

00:42:28.280 Right.

00:42:29.280 How do you get, in your analogy, the fish back upstream?

00:42:32.440 Yeah.

00:42:33.600 Thanks for continuing the analogy.

00:42:36.560 Yeah.

00:42:38.440 Reinvent things.

00:42:39.740 In fact, reinvent everything.

00:42:40.940 Education.

00:42:45.760 How about taking a year out of high school and focusing on what's important?

00:42:48.900 How about taking a year out of college, focusing on what's important?

00:42:52.080 How about switching to lifelong learning?

00:42:54.460 So a 20-year-old can realistically expect to be graduating first stage of education and getting out into the workforce, choosing a career earlier,

00:43:01.760 and maybe having time to actually readjust that career based on lifelong learning, saying that didn't work out.

00:43:07.140 What about long-term career sabbaticals?

00:43:10.040 What about joining a company and becoming an employee but being able to take a five, seven-year sabbatical?

00:43:17.640 But you're still an employee.

00:43:18.860 You still get a little bit of a salary.

00:43:20.260 Yeah, there's some simplifying the economics here for sure.

00:43:23.840 But imagine you still are attached to that company, still have the business card, the email address, you go to the Christmas parties, the training sessions, you might even do half a day a week.

00:43:34.340 The condition would be that after that sabbatical, maybe you've had one, two, three kids.

00:43:38.820 Maybe not, but you have that sabbatical.

00:43:40.820 The condition is you have to come back for three years.

00:43:43.860 So, just an idea.

00:43:44.760 And then we have some accelerator programs.

00:43:48.180 You know, parents, particularly mothers, I would say, are incredibly efficient.

00:43:52.540 Good at timekeeping, conflict resolution, organization.

00:43:57.040 Hire young mothers. 1.00

00:43:59.080 27, 30, 33.

00:44:00.480 That's possible now, but it's a huge vulnerability for any young person to assume,

00:44:05.600 okay, I'm going to have that family first, and then I'm going to cross everything and try and have my career.

00:44:10.020 So, that's what's disjointed at the moment.

00:44:12.040 The idea that we have to...

00:44:14.760 Complete our education, in effect, training, whatever it is.

00:44:19.360 Start a career, but get onto that ladder at a certain point that the vulnerability, particularly for women, of stepping back is... 0.94

00:44:28.620 Right now, it's not minimized, but we need to minimize that risk.

00:44:32.560 I think blending everything together is the only possibility.

00:44:36.080 And the one hope I do see is...

00:44:40.860 If I can go back briefly to Hungary, I get asked a lot about Hungary.

00:44:43.580 I go there a lot.

00:44:45.440 I work with the former president, Kellen Novak, on a non-profit, XY Worldwide,

00:44:49.920 and we're doing all sorts of advisory work and awareness programs around the world on this topic.

00:44:54.240 So, policy there is fascinating.

00:44:55.800 There's so many policies.

00:45:00.240 But the one I think that may have had the most traction was if you said, as a young person, I want to have a kid, you would get a mortgage deposit, depending on the size of house you wanted.

00:45:15.060 Now, why didn't everybody go for big houses?

00:45:18.080 Well, you know, the overall risk is still higher and you don't need that space.

00:45:22.140 But if you end up having those number of children, two, three, or four, the deposit's basically cancelled.

00:45:27.600 You don't ever pay that back.

00:45:29.080 And if you don't, you pay a portion of it.

00:45:30.600 And if you don't have any kids, well, you have to pay it back like you would have had done anyway.

00:45:33.440 I think a lot of young people thought, wow, we can get a house.

00:45:36.200 Now, does that sound coercive?

00:45:37.780 Oh, my gosh, let's get married and have kids to have a house. 0.90

00:45:39.860 People don't do that.

00:45:41.200 It means, I think we know, I mean, family policies have failed so much worldwide generally that people aren't taking $5,000 and saying, great, let's go to the bar tonight and find someone to kind of deposit that check with nine months from now.

00:45:55.700 That doesn't happen.

00:45:56.660 This is too important.

00:45:58.280 So I think enabling younger people who want children and become more aware of unplanned childlessness and this curve.

00:46:08.680 Now, one final thing, education itself.

00:46:10.980 People need to be taught.

00:46:12.180 Young people are taught often what's called comprehensive sex ed.

00:46:16.640 Not just in developed nations, but you go to parts of Africa, Southeast Asia.

00:46:23.420 There are nonprofits there teaching.

00:46:25.700 But it stops at how not to get pregnant.

00:46:31.480 That's what it's all.

00:46:32.200 It's not comprehensive.

00:46:33.440 It's that and that alone.

00:46:34.880 No one's saying, oh, and by the way, here are some risks.

00:46:37.840 And if you really do want four children, the spacing thing about delaying them three, four years might not be for you if you really want.

00:46:44.140 Those conversations need to enter into our education system.

00:46:47.120 Well, you use the term that you use often, which is unplanned childlessness.

00:46:50.940 And I think that's really a big portion of this conversation because I think the overwhelming majority of people, and I include myself in this, just fundamentally do not understand fertility even remotely.

00:47:02.720 So can you talk to us a little bit about some of the facts and myths about that?

00:47:07.200 Yeah.

00:47:08.360 And, of course, there's so many people proposing theories that sperm counts are falling and that that's a factor and that women's biology isn't quite as – it happens younger than people might think.

00:47:20.780 So – and those all may be true.

00:47:24.020 What I'm saying is that before biology becomes a factor – so biology is a big, big thing – there's another more important factor that takes – it's like a filter, if you like.

00:47:36.720 So, you know, what – I'll try this.

00:47:40.040 Why is the water in the river, you know, becoming less and less and less and less?

00:47:44.100 Well, it's something upstream is causing it.

00:47:45.940 So trying to focus on that itself is an issue.

00:47:50.400 But to summarize childlessness, we have voluntary childlessness.

00:47:54.940 It's about 10% of people never have a desire to have children.

00:47:58.460 And my experience will have no regrets and possibly won't understand those who do have that desire and vice versa.

00:48:05.500 So – and we need to respect that.

00:48:06.900 Those people have big roles to play in society and are playing big roles.

00:48:11.520 And nonprofits, I think, are the biggest contingent in some senses.

00:48:14.620 So that's voluntary.

00:48:16.820 You then have involuntary childlessness, which is quite tightly defined as either a medical reason, maybe there's an illness, a hysterectomy, something happened to one of a couple.

00:48:26.640 Or biological.

00:48:27.800 Basically, you've tried and tried and tried and IVF and it hasn't worked.

00:48:31.320 There is no formal category for circumstantial childlessness.

00:48:37.380 Biggest factor, not finding a partner.

00:48:39.460 That's not involuntary childlessness.

00:48:41.560 Other factors, socioeconomic concerns.

00:48:43.800 So that's why I coined unplanned childlessness.

00:48:46.320 It's now in my published paper.

00:48:48.060 And it was brought – it's now in an international declaration, 57 nations in Porto two weeks ago.

00:48:55.620 I worked with an Austrian MP, Gudrun Kugler, who included this term, unplanned childlessness.

00:49:01.620 And I was there in person to see politicians from the UK, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative, times 57 nations in a clean recession of 300 people unanimously vote to support that resolution, which includes these definitions.

00:49:15.400 So childlessness is not about – I think people – someone once said to me, so this is not my analogy, so I'm going to get a cop out if people don't like this.

00:49:28.280 It's not like buying a pet.

00:49:29.880 It's not like, okay, now is the time for a child.

00:49:31.880 I'm going to go down to the pet store.

00:49:33.060 A lot of things have to line up at the right time.

00:49:37.140 And finding a partner is the biggest one.

00:49:39.320 Or not going through a breakup.

00:49:40.980 So many people break up.

00:49:42.580 You know, dating for seven years, you know, sure, we're going to have kids together, 32, breakup.

00:49:48.260 Or something happens.

00:49:49.000 So unplanned childlessness is the big factor here.

00:49:52.880 For the UK, I recently updated my analysis.

00:49:56.820 A woman turning 28 in the UK has a 50-50% chance of ever becoming a mother at 28.

00:50:06.480 And most countries are below 30, but – and the US is lower than that.

00:50:09.940 But the US, again, is – Asian Americans are a little bit different to other groups, so it's a little bit more complicated in the US.

00:50:15.260 But I think simply letting young people know, sure, get as much education as you can.

00:50:21.560 Sure, establish yourself on your career path.

00:50:23.640 But by the way, you better think about this curve because it's there and, you know, like they're not – you can't cheat the curve.

00:50:31.220 It's there. 0.98

00:50:32.280 And I think, you know, look, men are ignorant about fertility, absolutely. 0.99

00:50:37.100 But I also find it shocking how ignorant women are about their own fertility. 1.00

00:50:42.420 They seem to think that you can just – you know, you're going to be able to have kids seeing you're 38, 39. 0.78

00:50:48.740 Now, some people may be able to.

00:50:50.620 And obviously that's great.

00:50:51.700 And some people are able to in their early 40s.

00:50:54.580 But that's really the exception that proves the rule, isn't it?

00:50:59.020 The amount of information on this, to be honest with you, I can see it.

00:51:06.020 But it's been a one-way street controlled – the message, a one-way street controlled by groups of anti-natalists.

00:51:15.040 Going back to the likes of Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s, the book The Population Bomb, that way of thinking got into the education system.

00:51:24.900 Education materials only talk about population explosions.

00:51:28.280 Still, you know, they cut off this year and they point to the year 1800 and they're like, oh, look at the increase.

00:51:35.080 They don't then tell you, oh, yeah, by the way, it's going to flatten out.

00:51:38.980 And then when I do point out that we are going to peak total population, that's not far away now.

00:51:45.240 Yeah, but U2100, they will say, there's still going to be around 8, 9 billion people.

00:51:50.560 Yeah, but they're all old people needing care. 1.00

00:51:52.760 It's not the same as it is now.

00:51:54.380 So there are people out there trying to block messages, and one of the messages that they're trying to block is educating women about fertility.

00:52:02.540 So they're very happy to confuse – I've seen it.

00:52:05.800 I was invited to Doha Debates two years ago.

00:52:10.780 It never aired because, unfortunately, that series coincided with October 7th.

00:52:16.380 And the tone of it, the host was a comedian.

00:52:20.780 And once you get comedians involved in things, you know, it was too serious an event, I think.

00:52:25.960 And sadly, it was pulled.

00:52:28.060 But I was debating against, you know, a lady who runs a population organization. 1.00

00:52:34.300 For me, she's a population denier because she would not talk about low birth rates even in her own home country of India.

00:52:40.300 But it seems to be that, you know, young people are engaged to this message, particularly young women.

00:52:48.880 They want to hear, yeah, you can have a career.

00:52:50.640 Do it.

00:52:51.000 You're free to whatever.

00:52:52.460 There's no downside to this.

00:52:54.260 Don't listen to Stephen, who represents the patriarchy.

00:52:58.140 You know, so people like me in the past were blamed as being, you know, anti-environmental.

00:53:04.820 Now the patriarchy.

00:53:05.920 Now the next wave of confusion is coming in.

00:53:07.800 I've heard some politicians pick up on messages, which is, it's too late anyway.

00:53:13.140 Let's not even think about what can we do now.

00:53:15.140 I think that's another anti-natalist message creeping in.

00:53:17.660 So you're talking about women awareness and I'm broadening it.

00:53:20.300 There's an anti-natalist message driving many things.

00:53:24.960 And I've been, you know, I've had it in my face more than once.

00:53:28.800 And we're talking about an anti-natalist message.

00:53:32.080 I haven't seen it so much over here, but I've seen it certainly in the States,

00:53:36.180 particularly in places like New York, where bringing children into the world is seen as

00:53:42.720 an act of grotesque selfishness, because number one, the planet is already dying, is their

00:53:49.380 narrative.

00:53:49.780 And then you're just going to bring children in.

00:53:51.780 That's going to accelerate its demise. 0.98

00:53:53.940 And also as well, I hear people going, well, you know, the world is so terrible.

00:53:58.540 Why would I bring children into it?

00:54:00.420 That is, you know, that's awful.

00:54:02.580 They're going to suffer.

00:54:04.640 Yeah.

00:54:05.800 And I, I mean, I, I get that.

00:54:08.920 I get it in comments.

00:54:09.860 I get it in attacks.

00:54:10.700 I got it in a classroom, university classroom in Tokyo this year, doing a lecture to young

00:54:16.780 Japanese students, when at the end, a British lecturer came in and sat at the back and then

00:54:23.800 got up and started heckling me, basically saying the things, why are you here talking

00:54:28.820 to these young students?

00:54:30.060 Why are you trying to tell the environment's burning?

00:54:32.100 The oceans are boiling.

00:54:33.740 People shouldn't and wouldn't let me speak.

00:54:35.640 So these voices are there trying to, I think, poison young people's minds.

00:54:44.660 I do think it's a poison because why can we not at least talk about this topic?

00:54:49.460 Why can we not debate this?

00:54:51.940 It's perhaps the most topic, there's a lot of toxic topics out there, but usually you can

00:54:57.060 get a decent debate about most things.

00:55:00.000 I feel in this space, in the same way when I was cancelled at Cambridge and, you know, there's

00:55:05.100 a fake website that's been put up trying to discredit the documentary with, you know,

00:55:11.460 the UNFPA is not basically saying the message I've been sharing is right.

00:55:16.860 The report titled in the past two months was the real fertility crisis about people not

00:55:23.840 having the children they want to have.

00:55:25.280 The world is shifting.

00:55:27.100 So I am hopeful when in very few years, all those rogue voices will die down because they'll 1.00

00:55:33.440 just be seen as the idiots and people want to talk about this. 1.00

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00:57:02.620 But to me, it's not an anti-child message.

00:57:06.360 To me, it's an anti-human message.

00:57:08.240 It's putting forward a narrative that human beings are evil and that we are a scourge on

00:57:14.540 the planet.

00:57:15.460 Yeah.

00:57:16.260 So, and where does that come from?

00:57:18.440 Now, that's quite an extreme viewpoint, but it's there.

00:57:21.400 I've interacted online with some people with this view.

00:57:24.960 Some people have made pods from that community, you know, reviewing the documentary.

00:57:31.500 So I've seen it.

00:57:32.180 I can listen to it.

00:57:32.920 Now, there are some people who literally want humanity to die.

00:57:38.240 And they're happy to say it.

00:57:41.840 Most of them don't say it is what I've figured out.

00:57:43.820 Most of them know if they come out and say, I want humanity to die, a lot of people are

00:57:47.820 going to switch off to that message.

00:57:49.560 So they find more subtle ways, maybe through, you know, writing books called the population

00:57:54.560 bomb.

00:57:54.920 I don't know.

00:57:56.000 But those voices, but there are people.

00:57:58.520 And what's really interesting, if you go back in history, who funded a lot of the non-profits

00:58:04.440 in the space, like population connection, used to be called zero population growth, going

00:58:09.780 back to Paul Ehrlich in the 60s.

00:58:11.720 All those, who's funding them?

00:58:13.600 Not them specifically, but a lot of money went into this.

00:58:16.800 Well, you look at the Ford Foundation.

00:58:19.700 This is on record.

00:58:20.720 Don't worry.

00:58:21.040 You're not going to get sued.

00:58:21.780 I mean, it's been written about a lot.

00:58:23.400 The Rockefeller Foundation.

00:58:24.680 Rockefeller Foundation funded a lot of the India campaigns on low fertility, which directly

00:58:32.680 or indirectly, some say directly, led to forced sterilizations of something like 8 million

00:58:39.040 people, literally people taken off trains.

00:58:41.040 So there are voices out there, some quite wealthy, who, to me, their motives at least

00:58:52.800 have to be questioned as to whether they really care about humanity.

00:58:55.560 But definitely some people don't.

00:58:57.860 And the more I look into this, and this is going to sound like a provocative question,

00:59:03.680 and it really doesn't mean to.

00:59:04.880 Isn't this just a natural byproduct of women becoming more educated, having more rights, 1.00

00:59:13.720 having control of their reproductive rights? 0.99

00:59:16.700 That most women, if we're being honest, and you showed yourself in the doc, they don't want 1.00

00:59:21.560 five or six kids.

00:59:22.960 They don't want four kids. 0.93

00:59:24.360 They'll be like, two's enough.

00:59:26.720 Two is just enough.

00:59:28.520 That's what I can cope with.

00:59:30.000 That's what I'll be happy with.

00:59:31.460 I also don't just want to be a homemaker.

00:59:34.000 I also want my own life.

00:59:35.800 And you're looking at these women, you go, I mean, fair enough.

00:59:39.060 No?

00:59:39.880 Sure.

00:59:40.580 So I would never want to be associated with anything that would take away any women's rights.

00:59:52.160 In fact, I don't even want to get involved in conversations about abortion.

00:59:55.640 As a man, it's like, OK, that's so delicate.

00:59:59.100 And will it affect me personally?

01:00:01.800 In a relationship, yes.

01:00:03.100 But I try to be agnostic on all of those things.

01:00:05.580 I want to say that first.

01:00:06.820 And I'll get to your point about women, but let's talk about men for a second.

01:00:11.840 So this Gaussian curve, that's everywhere.

01:00:14.900 We have some data for the US for men at a granular level.

01:00:17.920 It's very hard to find.

01:00:19.140 And guess what?

01:00:20.160 The same Gaussian curve is there for men, too, just a little bit later.

01:00:23.760 And as they stretch, it's like a coordinated stretch.

01:00:27.160 So men and women are interlinked.

01:00:30.800 So it's not just about women focusing on education and focusing on other things.

01:00:38.180 Men are, too.

01:00:39.260 We're all in this race together.

01:00:40.380 And what's happened with double incomes?

01:00:42.920 Well, property prices are in case we've got double incomes.

01:00:45.500 So it's no longer an option or choice for most for only one of us to work.

01:00:50.900 So hence, everything's interlinked.

01:00:52.540 So if we start blaming women or thinking, well, that's the solution lies with women. 1.00

01:00:58.240 We're going to miss out again.

01:01:00.180 You can't move one of these curves without moving the other.

01:01:02.640 So I think it's a dead end going down, you know, what happened in the past.

01:01:11.220 We can't change it.

01:01:12.360 For me, I wouldn't want to change it.

01:01:14.420 And men and women are completely linked to each other.

01:01:17.660 But isn't that, forgive me, but that's kind of where the problem is.

01:01:21.340 Because if the reality is that, as you say, the double incomes have made everything more expensive,

01:01:27.440 it then makes it very difficult for people to survive on one income.

01:01:31.120 And that makes it very difficult for people to have kids in the way that they would want to.

01:01:36.200 And unless we address that in some way, we aren't going to really get anywhere.

01:01:40.360 Yeah.

01:01:40.540 And I come back to the Hungarian housing scheme again.

01:01:43.080 I think government has to do something at that level to, I mean,

01:01:47.900 if you're thinking of this in terms of pure economics,

01:01:51.540 I read this morning the UK is going to be the fastest growing country population-wise in Europe.

01:01:58.960 And it's because of immigration, of course.

01:02:01.480 Well, the issue there is immigrants get old too.

01:02:04.420 So it means if that's your policy, or non-policy,

01:02:08.200 you're going to have effectively the same number or an increasing number of older people

01:02:14.940 to take care of forever for as long as you can find immigrants. 1.00

01:02:19.380 And with birth rates going down in India and South Africa too,

01:02:22.320 that's a risky strategy, but not to get onto that too much.

01:02:25.520 The point is here that unless we have new people coming through a system,

01:02:31.880 we won't be able to support our entire infrastructure for those who do have kids and don't have kids.

01:02:37.660 So how do we get back to that age?

01:02:44.220 Can we?

01:02:45.380 I don't know.

01:02:46.600 Can we put enough incentives to create such a bubble that enough younger people will have children 0.99

01:02:52.680 and maybe even possibly have more children than they would have otherwise to support the entire system?

01:02:57.620 So it's a conversation we all need to be having.

01:03:00.000 I'm not sitting here saying I've confidently found the solution.

01:03:02.260 I'm not.

01:03:03.220 I'm saying I think this is our best chance by far.

01:03:07.000 And by the way, it means reinventing just about everything.

01:03:09.240 Well, Francis wants to end the education of women.

01:03:11.780 Yeah.

01:03:12.540 You know.

01:03:13.160 What was controversial about that?

01:03:14.460 Why don't we try that?

01:03:15.380 And then if that doesn't work, we'll try.

01:03:17.080 No, no.

01:03:17.980 But this is kind of the issue really, isn't it?

01:03:20.560 Because on the one hand, we all are very happy for women to be educated.

01:03:25.300 Speak for yourself.

01:03:26.020 And I don't think anybody would want to hold anyone back from having a career, male or female,

01:03:33.440 if that's what they'd like to do.

01:03:35.340 I can only speak from my experience.

01:03:37.140 I know quite a lot of women who fill different types of templates. 1.00

01:03:42.580 I know women who love having a career and several kids and they manage it great. 1.00

01:03:48.940 And I know some people who feel like, well, actually, I had a career and it was on reflection

01:03:55.200 now that I've had kids, a bit of a waste of time, actually.

01:03:59.200 And so there's that full spectrum.

01:04:01.200 And it comes back to what are the societal expectations?

01:04:05.160 What are the cultural norms?

01:04:06.640 What are you seeing around you?

01:04:08.520 What are you being told by your female friends and relatives, et cetera, about parenthood, about

01:04:14.480 children, et cetera?

01:04:15.420 And I think it'd be difficult to deny that we have lived for some time now in an environment

01:04:21.140 in the West, at least, I can't speak for other places, where, you know, children are kind

01:04:27.340 of seen as a burden more than they are seen as a joy and as a thing that you, even when

01:04:33.080 we know from surveys that surveys actually most women would really like to have kids. 0.99

01:04:37.540 Yeah, certainly it's absolutely true that, you know, most women want kids.

01:04:44.900 And there's this conundrum that comes back to vulnerability.

01:04:48.700 Do I do it now or do I wait another year?

01:04:51.880 And a partner may be saying the same thing.

01:04:54.060 There's some incentive to wait a little bit longer.

01:04:58.240 And that's where unplanned childlessness kicks in.

01:05:00.220 And it's the ones that you're meeting who have had the career and the largest family took

01:05:06.280 the plunge at some point when someone else may have delayed a little bit.

01:05:10.220 And then other things happen in life.

01:05:13.820 And, you know, so for example, in the US right now, for every 10 women, 35 and below,

01:05:24.560 one, approximately, never wants kids, nine do.

01:05:32.000 Of the nine, three will not have kids, six will, based on current fertility patterns.

01:05:36.640 You know, if you look at fertility last year.

01:05:38.580 So for the nine who do, one third of intending mothers will remain childless.

01:05:44.760 And it's lack of awareness or lack of understanding of the complex factors like breakups, like your

01:05:51.220 partner not being this, that just creep in.

01:05:53.080 And then the moment drifts away.

01:05:55.420 And this timing curve, it's, it put me in a bad mood that day in Kyoto.

01:06:00.940 And I'm still in a bit of a bad mood because I wanted to think that we had more autonomy

01:06:04.040 to choose the timing ourselves.

01:06:06.100 But you can see it in the data.

01:06:07.700 This is to do with synchronization forces that just get harder and harder and harder.

01:06:14.940 You know, if you imagine today, you're an 18, 20 year old with your first girlfriend,

01:06:20.240 boyfriend, that's getting a little serious.

01:06:22.420 You're probably not thinking, this is the woman I'm going to have kids with when I get 0.99

01:06:26.280 to 35, because that's too far away.

01:06:28.460 You're just not even thinking that.

01:06:30.620 So you're thinking about, well, this is fun.

01:06:32.600 And then maybe there's a breakup and then your partner at 23, 24, you're still not thinking

01:06:39.920 that way.

01:06:41.520 And I think a lot of people drift through relationships without taking them seriously enough, because

01:06:48.520 that might be the best relationship you were ever going to have.

01:06:51.400 It's just you weren't on the same page as society, which is telling you, wait, wait, wait.

01:06:57.360 And I think this has caused a lot of other issues.

01:06:59.500 The whole issue with young men, sexless young men, and I know they exist, I've certainly 1.00

01:07:05.380 met them in Japan.

01:07:06.160 I think they're just zoning out and playing in their mother's basement, playing games,

01:07:12.900 because I think we're meant to form relationships sooner, and that means something to us biologically

01:07:20.220 and psychologically.

01:07:21.960 And by knowing, well, I've got to wait for 15 years before I even can start to think about

01:07:26.520 parenthood, I think it's part of a broader societal issue.

01:07:30.220 And one of the things you explore are these people who want kids and then don't have them.

01:07:38.520 And I've actually met a lady at a party in New York, and she represents one of these organizations.

01:07:46.020 I mean, it was haunting talking to her.

01:07:49.920 There was just a profound sense of sadness there.

01:07:54.280 Profound.

01:07:54.800 And again, my heart goes out to even listeners of this, because it's such a difficult topic.

01:08:01.060 And we all might assume that our aunt or our colleague, they must have never wanted kids.

01:08:05.960 You know, they seem quite happy, you know, and it's a private thing.

01:08:10.300 You know, I read a poem by one of these people, I'll not remember it, but it was just heartbreaking

01:08:14.720 about being in the office when a new mother comes in with her baby to show everybody in the

01:08:19.480 office and all the women flock. 1.00

01:08:22.280 And she's locked, trapped in her desk, just frozen, unable to escape, because she can't

01:08:29.360 get past this, but just wanting to get out of there.

01:08:34.100 Not all feel like that.

01:08:35.760 And some people, I've been told by this community, I should say that later in life, you know,

01:08:41.740 you can find other purposes.

01:08:42.860 But for many years, decades, or maybe forever, there's a grief, and that's what people in

01:08:47.700 that category call it, men and women.

01:08:49.480 I've seen men cry as much as women about not having the kids that they intended to have. 0.76

01:08:56.120 And it's just like, what happened?

01:08:58.180 Timing.

01:08:58.500 And because that's the thing that I found surprising, because I always thought, you

01:09:04.440 know, for blokes, you know, well, you can have kids at any age, like Mick Jagger seems

01:09:10.360 to be popping them out at a rate that is just quite frankly staggering, considering he's

01:09:15.180 in his early 80s.

01:09:16.640 But that doesn't, that's kind of an illusion, isn't it? 1.00

01:09:21.060 You know, we're stupid. 1.00

01:09:22.520 I'll, I'll, wait, we're stupid. 1.00

01:09:25.400 I mean, if you think about it, no, I mean, biology is a factor, sure. 0.99

01:09:29.980 So we got that one, in theory.

01:09:32.160 But you've got to find a partner.

01:09:34.080 And unless you're, you know, super famous, super rich, something's...

01:09:40.020 For the listeners, he's pointing us for answers.

01:09:41.740 Yeah, exactly.

01:09:43.180 Tick, tick.

01:09:46.320 Not.

01:09:48.740 So...

01:09:49.260 Right.

01:09:50.120 You know, we forget that we're actually competing against younger versions of ourself.

01:09:59.540 You know, I learned that, you know, divorced at, you know, 42, wasn't exactly planned, but

01:10:03.840 there we are.

01:10:04.640 I thought, well, I might meet someone plenty of time yet.

01:10:07.340 And, you know, you realize, you know, that person over there who's now X years younger

01:10:13.260 than me, X plus five years younger than me, X plus 10 years younger, who's able to have

01:10:16.920 a child, that young woman, you know.

01:10:18.740 So, you know, why would she choose me compared to everyone else?

01:10:22.740 So biology, we've been fooling ourselves.

01:10:26.580 It doesn't even come into it.

01:10:28.360 And for that one 80-year-old who has eight kids, you know, all that's happening is the

01:10:34.180 woman he's having kids with, which are probably almost certainly under 40, under 35, they would 0.76

01:10:38.760 have been having kids with somebody else.

01:10:40.420 So there aren't more children overall.

01:10:42.080 So the overall thing, it's just really, yeah.

01:10:46.080 Because, and, but that ties into the fact that, and it's actually a lot of what we talk about

01:10:51.740 here at Trigonometry, which is we live in a society where we're fundamentally dishonest,

01:10:57.920 not only with our children, not only with our peers, not only when we're at work, but also

01:11:05.120 fundamentally with ourselves.

01:11:06.960 We are in denial of our own biology.

01:11:11.080 Lying to ourselves or biology generally, trying to believe we're younger than we actually are.

01:11:15.960 All of it.

01:11:16.640 All of it.

01:11:17.300 I think, I think, and this is what it comes down to with this conversation, is a fundamental

01:11:21.260 lack of honesty.

01:11:22.460 Yeah.

01:11:22.660 And what, you know, because we think, and look, maybe push back on this if you think

01:11:26.840 this is untrue, but because we think being honest and being direct is unpleasant, it's

01:11:33.360 rude, and it can be seen to be cruel.

01:11:36.960 But actually, to me, the cruelest thing that you can do is be dishonest, particularly with

01:11:43.640 a woman, and say, look, your most fertile years are between X and Y.

01:11:48.820 You know, you can run the risk if you want and try and have it later, but if this is what

01:11:57.540 you really want, then this is what you need to optimise for and prioritise for.

01:12:02.340 No, you're absolutely right.

01:12:03.140 I mean, we all relish, I think, in the idea of longevity, that 30 is the new 20, that 40

01:12:08.900 is the new 30, but biology hasn't reset itself at all.

01:12:14.740 You know, and again, from this curve, there's no uptick from IVF.

01:12:18.200 So all this idea of, well, you've got IVF, you've got egg freezing, it doesn't actually

01:12:22.420 look pretty good for likelihood.

01:12:24.800 Okay, some will benefit, but overall, it causes more people to delay just because you can do

01:12:28.920 that, and many of those fall into unplanned childlessness, so it washes out.

01:12:32.900 So it is a lie.

01:12:33.920 So that promise that you can delay parenthood incentivises people to attempt it, and then 0.91

01:12:42.300 many of them are actually then unable to have the children that they wanted to have.

01:12:46.280 I see.

01:12:47.820 That really is what I think Francis is talking about, which is we're just lying to people,

01:12:52.280 basically.

01:12:52.780 We're just telling them things are going to be possible, which are, for many of them,

01:12:55.980 not going to be possible.

01:12:57.940 And if they had known that, they would have made us a whole set of different choices,

01:13:01.420 quite possibly, in the run-up to it.

01:13:03.900 Stephen, it's great to have you back on the show.

01:13:05.700 Before we head on over to Substack and ask you questions from our supporters, what's the

01:13:09.680 one thing that we're not talking about that we should be?

01:13:11.820 The next humanitarian crisis, which will be ageing people in countries like Brazil, but 0.83

01:13:21.260 more particularly, I'm so worried about old people in India. 0.99

01:13:24.880 We haven't got our head around the idea that these are nations that are going to age very

01:13:30.380 rapidly without any support systems.

01:13:33.160 And I just want people to start to think a bit longer term, particularly when they criticise

01:13:36.440 countries like India for high birth rates, which was a thing of the past, that actually

01:13:41.300 the real crisis there is being baked in right now.

01:13:44.760 Old people. 0.98

01:13:46.600 Stephen, thanks for coming on.

01:13:47.840 Head on over to Substack where we get to ask him your questions.

01:13:50.680 The usual explanations for the fall of the birth rate in the West involve the economic

01:13:56.620 cost of childbearing.

01:13:58.340 So why is the birth rate falling in Cuba and in North Korea, where childbirth and childcare

01:14:02.660 are free and supported by the government?

01:14:04.340 Your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineup is here on September 11th through 13th at

01:14:23.560 Arendale Park.

01:14:24.720 Three nights, five shows, huge laughs.

01:14:27.900 September 11th through 13th.

01:14:29.540 Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

TRIGGERnometry - September 17, 2025

We're Not Having Enough Kids - It's A Disaster - Stephen J. Shaw

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