Pronatalist Debate: Culture vs. Housing with @MoreBirths

In this episode, the discussion revolves around fertility rates, demographic collapse, and fertility policy featuring Dan from More Births, a renowned figure in public communication on these issues. Topics include the significance of cultural attitudes over housing space in influencing fertility, the concept of a 'fertility stack'—various factors impacting fertility rates—and related statistics. The conversation also touches on the importance of a pronatalist culture, early marriage, religiosity, and the support of extended family, as well as the negative impact of high C-section rates. Join our hosts and Dan as they delve into these complex issues, debate their viewpoints, and discuss solutions for encouraging higher fertility rates.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. We've got Dan has here.

He is more births on X. He is a legend in communicating with the public on fertility and demographic collapse and fertility policy. And we are thrilled. And we just saw him in person a couple of weeks ago. Now he's here with us. On the podcast. And he's going to talk about his top theories, his thoughts on priorities.

Because I'm going to explain why they're wrong. Okay. And Malcolm's going to be, and we're going to see our own little base camp flame war here, marshmallows over the fire of disagreement. It's all good.

Malcolm Collins: Also he's in a fertility collapse task force. We're putting together with the heritage foundation, which I'm also really excited about right now.

So we've got right now, you guys, the heritage foundation guys, and Catherine.

More Births: Puckaloo. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But. The argument we were getting into because you you were destroying it all you're saying you actually agree with me and I don't like this because But I was saying that because there were two core concepts You we wanted to go over with a lot of statistics in this episode One [00:01:00] is the importance of living space to fertility rates Which is something that you're known for frequently arguing and then the second is the concept of a fertility stack which is a collection of things that impact fertility rates And I was saying that I actually disagree even with the lesser fertility stack issue, because I think it draws away for the overwhelming importance of culture.

And I think that if we don't look at this as a culture first problem, it causes groups that could otherwise be saved to be able to. Push off their, their real problems to like secondary quality of life issues that they want to micro focus on. And I think giving them an excuse to do that is incredibly damaging to the wider conversation.

So I want to hear your debate here. And stats on why this stuff is so important.

More Births: Okay. Well, I, I'm, I'm, I have bad news. I, I actually do agree with you. There's a big problem here. I don't know. We, we want to, we want to be a [00:02:00] flame war here, but actually no, you, you are right. I mean, the, the most important driver of fertility above everything else is culture.

Yeah, absolutely. And. And so I do agree this this concept of the fertility stack. So I I can I can talk about what the major first

Malcolm Collins: first let's do the major things in the fertility stack then try to convince me that housing space matters at all Because I, I just say, and I, and I'll repeatedly say this is, is if you look historically in America, it was common for multiple families to live in one household.

Like that, that means that the only reason we care about living space before having kids is completely cultural. It's, it's like being trans or something. Like, I don't understand how I can say that one, if I'm like, this is inefficient and doesn't help people. So we should change our culture rather than change, you know, our biology.

When I look at houses, I'm like, well, we should change our culture rather than changing our environments because there's nuance

Simone Collins: to this. And I want to hear Dan's [00:03:00] argument and I can also throw in some things that some people have shared with me that have moderated my views on this.

More Births: Okay. Yes. Would you, do you want to talk about housing first or the, yeah, let's talk about housing first.

I guess the

Malcolm Collins: easier one for you to argue. Cause it's such a, your core thing.

More Births: Yeah. Yeah. So, Pro NATO belief and having a culture that's pro family is definitely very important. But, but, you know, housing, having the right kind of housing and housing space does matter also. And I just want to use the example of a group that is all around you guys, where you are in Pennsylvania, which is, which is the Amish.

So, so we have, you know, the, Example of Israel, which is a wonderful example of, of pro natal culture

Malcolm Collins: and very dense housing. That's gotten denser recently.

More Births: Right. No, very dense housing. That is there. That is actually, I would say their biggest limitation. But I would say, you know, the Amish have many of many similar values, you know, pro natal belief very religious, tight knit culture.

And they also have You know a lot of space and [00:04:00] a lot of room to grow and you get a fertility rate of of six

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the core thing that correlates with fertility in American what is it dutch whatever speakers basically amish in america is the use of cell phones which is I mean, it's so overwhelming it cuts their fertility rate by into like a third of what it is when they don't use Cell phones which shows that that cultural intrusion matters more to them than the land ownership itself You And I also point out that if you're contrasting Amish culture with Jewish culture in the way it relates to land ownership, you can immediately see how Jewish culture negates the housing issue specifically with, with Amish individuals, it's believed you need your own house to get married and they'll even do like barn raises and like, you know, you make money off the land and everything like that.

If you go to Israel, if you go, and we've argued this in other videos, that Judaism is an urban specialized culture, I think today, 98 percent of Jews live in urban areas. If you go to rural parts of Israel and you look at the way they structure their, their cities, they look like micro dense [00:05:00] settlements instead of like actually like spread apart cities typically based around like a minion.

And it's, and I'll, I'll put pictures on screen of it cause it's really weird. But it shows that even if you give Jews a lot of land, because their culture is so adapted, For less space, they use the land in a way where they're not like taking it up with giant houses and everything. So, I don't want to say that you're I do hear

More Births: it.

I do hear it. No, I really do. I do want to 1 thing. I do want to emphasize this is and this is the core of the topic of I say the fertility stack is that there. It is multifactored and I would agree with you that pronatal belief and culture are the most important element and I have that, you know, as the top of the I also want to point out there is, you know, quite a, you know, quite a significant housing restraint, particularly when you can't have, [00:06:00] you know, all of you know, all of cultures you know, being as pronatal as, as you can.

As Israel. So I want to, I want to, you know, present some stats, show us some stats. Sure, sure.

Simone Collins: Well, and while Dan pulls up some stats I will point out that one thing that really changed the way I look at this is a mother that I speak with a lot pointed out that it made sense or it could work to have a really big family and a lot of kids in a really small house.

When you lived in a culture where obviously the kids are playing outside all day They just come home for dinner and they sleep they basically eat and sleep in the house And the rest of the time they're out playing in the neighborhood kids can't go out anymore. They're not allowed to go out There's no space for all those kids

Malcolm Collins: simone You're the one who brought up the wolves of new york kids So these were like a family of like eight people who lived in a studio apartment and they never went outside in new york Leaving once a year and they grew up perfectly emotionally normal and everything like that.

You do not need space. You do not need the outdoors. They may have a [00:07:00] modifying effects, but they are not. There are ways to build culture around this. And this is like if I was going to conceptualize a fertility stack, instead of putting culture at the top of it, I'd say a fertility stack is almost like a A chart on the wall that like you need to read and culture is the lens so somebody can be like Oh that housing number is fuzzy and it's like no just change out the lens like ka chink and it's like oh It's not fuzzy anymore you don't need to because if you change culture you can change the optimal amount of really almost anything in the fertility stack whether that's income or housing or space but continue.

Yeah

More Births: What I'm showing here on the screen is this is a map of fertility in Sydney, Australia. So you have great, it's greater Sydney. So all the surrounding area is the Sydney suburbs. And then you have you know, downtown Sydney is that area with a fertility of one. So you're, you're in the, when you're in single family homes.

[00:08:00] And, you know, and I want to emphasize that this is normies. Okay. You know, these are,

Malcolm Collins: this, this could also be a map of urban monoculturism. Well,

Simone Collins: I think this thing is, is, is fertility roundup. Zvi, who mentions your work and talks about it also points out that what we're looking at is a lot of selection effects too, you know, like people who are choosing not to have kids don't go to urban.

Oh, I,

More Births: I know that. That's a, that, that is a. A fair point. I do want to point out particularly, you know, in terms of the selection argument. Well, I don't know if we want to take a minute here to look to go over this chart before we go to go on. Sure. Let's go over this chart. Yeah. So we do see that that the fertility in the Sydney Suburbs is very healthy.

It's, you know, around two you know, up to, up to 2.

1,

In many of the Sydney suburbs, as, as you get to the urban core, you're down to 1. And then, and then in the, in the urban core of Sydney your fertility is 1. 0. And I, [00:09:00] there's a couple, there's one factor that I really want to emphasize is Is is that is most of the apartment towers you know, and in downtown urban areas, it's all, you know, high rise apartment towers.

And most of these apartment towers tend to be studios and 1 and 2 bedroom apartments. So they tend to, you know, they tend to be very, very small. And there's actually. There's actually pretty strong cultural norms now that didn't exist before where, you know, the boys are supposed to have their, you know, if you have a boy, they're supposed to have their own room with only boys.

If a girl is supposed to have their own room with only girls, and it's supposed to be separate from the parents. That's the, I'm not saying, I'm not pressing about putting a value judgment on that. I'm just saying that that's the norm that we have now. And it's a pretty strong norm because Child Protective Services, you know, We'll actually use things like that, you know, as a judgment for whether they'll take somebody's kids away.

[00:10:00] So, so this is, this is a pretty,

Malcolm Collins: you know, we need to stop that in government. I mean, I think that this is a great point. You know, if we get in with the Trump administration with this task force. We need to be removing those sorts of barriers with Child Protective Services. And I'd also note, when you're talking about the city and people living in these cramped spaces, a point that Zvi made in his roundup that I thought was really powerful, which is that you actually probably want smaller apartments being made in urban centers, rather than larger apartments, if what you care about is fertility rates.

Because they are smaller apartments than individual people. What is really correlated with a drop in fertility rates isn't living in smaller apartments, but it's living with roommates. That's the thing that has like the biggest drop. And so if you get a bunch of like two bedrooms in like the, the middle of a city, instead of really small studios, then that means more people are living with roommates, really, that's what's happening.

And instead of having more room to themselves and more money to themselves, whereas I would say like the number one thing for me for an urban center would [00:11:00] be to change the zoning. to make very inexpensive, extremely small units for people during the stage of their life where they're looking for a wife.

And I think you can already see, do you engage in the stage of life where you go to a city to look for a wife? Lyman stone did data on this, and I'm sure you've looked at it where he shows that actually being in a metro area is increases your lifetime fertility rate. Whereas it's living with parents or living with a group that decreases it.

You, you saw that one. To the extent that it helps

Simone Collins: you get married younger, it's really helpful. Also to the extent that you get married younger and make a lot of money younger, because there's additional research on housing and fertility shows that if you acquire a home at a younger age that has a positive effect on her fertility because theoretically that could be like an additional income stream.

It's more financial stability. It can make people feel more comfortable. But right now, of course, as a young person, it's really hard to buy a home. But if you go to a city and make a lot of money, find a partner like that's great. So I like that point. [00:12:00]

More Births: All right, let him talk. Right, right. So there is. What you just mentioned, I, I, you know, I, I think that, that, that, that I have to disagree with it and, and here's why, because you know, I did read, you know, Sfi's Fertility Roundup, and I, I think it's, it's, it, it is, it does jive with how a lot of free market economists think, but, but actually what has happened, and we have enough experience to see this is that East Asia has done exactly this.

East Asia has, has a ton of exactly what you're talking about. Very inexpensive you know, small apartments for singles one and twos. And what I, what I had a post that, that got a lot of I think on Sunday is I, I called it a, it's a de facto one child policy where the people have tiny apartment.

They're very inexpensive, but they're very, very [00:13:00] small all across Asia. And the places where that are built like this, this is where you see fertility rates, you know, in Seoul. Of you know, of I think 0. 55 or something in Seoul and, and, you know, it's, there's kind of a misconception that Seoul is very expensive.

Actually, the rents in Seoul are 75 percent less than in the, in New York city. So you're going to pay 25%. In Seoul, what you're going to pay in New York City. So I lived

Malcolm Collins: in Seoul in, in one of these units,

More Births: I've been to Korea three times. So we, we, we have both, we both know Korea, but go ahead, go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: So I lived in one of these units.

I would, I actually could not sing the praises of this style of unit enough for high fertility rates. And I'll explain why when I look at the shower units. So first I need to talk about how small these units are. The one that I lived in. Was probably about double the size of a twin mattress. In terms of like the room vault space.

Maybe, maybe three twin mattresses if you like cut them [00:14:00] up and like, the restroom was a toilet and then on top of the toilet was a showerhead. Like they didn't have a separate space to go for like showering and toilet. It was just in a corner and that was it. And it, it, It really felt like the room from it crowd.

I don't know if anyone's seen that episode where they get the TV that's too big.

Speaker: Man, these anti piracy ads are getting really mean. I think we're sitting too close to the screen, and the floor's all sticky over here. All right. Okay, let's move back then. I

still think we're too close. Well then, sit in the sink. I'm not sitting in the sink again. Okay, princess. Your flat is way too small for this telly. That's nonsense.

Speaker 4: What's wrong with you now? I need to go to the toilet. Well then, go.

I'll hold it [00:15:00] in.

Malcolm Collins: But the point being is I was able to afford this place very inexpensively while I had a high paying job and then send that money for my wife to get her graduate degree and save money. And then we used money I saved during that period to like buy a real house.

It. If I had to live in like a New York style, like one of these larger houses, I wouldn't have been able to save as much money and set myself up as much. Like, what are your thoughts on that?

More Births: Well, I, I mean, this is, this is why you know, I try to be sort of agnostic on what the answer is and just kind of, you know, be, be driven as much as I can, you know, by the data.

And I don't want to claim to be, to have a hundred percent of the answers, but I do want to say that You know, the lowest fertility rates that we see in the world are places, you know, whether it be in China or Korea or even even Tokyo, Tokyo does a little bit better. But Tokyo's fertility is still only around 1.

0. Right? But, but these are places where, you know, [00:16:00] housing is actually abundant and cheap, but it's very small

Simone Collins: when I think that if it comes back to culture, like again at this, like, I'm really interested in the effects of that psychedelics can have from a therapeutic standpoint, whether you're dealing with depression or PTSD, but the research all shows.

Basically, if you just. Have a trip. You just like, okay, whatever. Try it out, but you don't go in with structure intentions, you know, the sort of a framework and plan like you don't change. You don't see an improvement in your situation where it's you come in with this framework of you're working with a therapist.

Here's the plan. You're coming in with these intentions. It can be transformational. I think the problem is in these cities that we're talking about, yeah. There isn't this perception of, okay, you go to the city to find your spouse, to make the money, to buy your house, to start your family. It is you go to the city to have fun.

You go to the city to travel more. You go to the city, you know, to, to do all these things. And when, when we look at these Asian cultures that are especially struggling with low birth [00:17:00] rates, when you look at the cultural traditions around dating, they're just. Like, it's very, very hard for people to find partners.

So it's no surprise to me that people in these cities are struggling. If you shifted that, and I know Tokyo, for example, is trying you know, Japan is trying to create new dating apps, for example and if you changed what it meant to live in the city and suddenly there were tons of singles events, or perhaps sponsored by the government, where you get dinner and drinks and it's speed dating you know, I think that things could be changed really quickly because it shifts the purpose of that low cost housing.

More Births: So, I don't know, I've got another, another Yeah, put up

Malcolm Collins: more, put up more, but I

More Births: want

Malcolm Collins: to hear you address Before we go further, I want to hear you address the Limestone Metro statistic, because I found that very interesting.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Specifically, this is the one here that being in a metro increases your overall fertility rate if you're in a metro when you're younger.

More Births: Well, okay, this is, there's a, you know, the, how, how are, the U. S. data classifies Metro [00:18:00] is really, It's not very granular is, is what I'm saying.

And I know exact, I, I, I've studied this data and I, I know exactly what he's talking about. I, I read, I read those papers a hundred percent. And so I live in an urban area. I, I live in a city according to the, the census data. So I'm in, I'm in an urban area, but I am, I am sitting here in a. A five bedroom single family home.

That's that's urban and it's all jumbled together. So

Malcolm Collins: i'm looking you have a Five bedroom home more births. We need to brought five bedroom. Do you have a backyard too? Well, no wonder you like housing you're you're living the life here. I it's not amazing It's a mansion. I'm gonna put on, I'm gonna put on visualization of more Bird house

Speaker 6: This estate is basically Buckingham Palace's less famous cousin. With rooms and stunning gardens, it's a quintessential British manor. It's said to have an underground pool and cinema.

Malcolm Collins: and I'll put on the [00:19:00] library.

Here we go. This is Hollywood.

More Births: Yeah. Yeah. We put, I have five tours and, and, and Seven. Seven butler's quarters. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: And I had a slide down, like a, you know, for mean butler

Malcolm Collins: kid. No, we actually my, my, my, I have a family member who insists on having an au pair for every kid they have, and they're a very high fertility family, and it is comical.

Simone Collins: I don't know. I can say this must be nice. Yeah, it must be nice.

More Births: No, it, it, I, I do wanna it does make it, it does make it a lot easier. And this is one thing that we need to talk about. I think you know, there, there an a, a great, you know, some of the great pronatalist communicators one of my, one of them is my friend, Tim Carney.

He has a book called Family Unfriendly. It's, he's a, he's a father of six. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a, he's a great guy. I hope, I hope you guys can meet him at some point. We

Simone Collins: did. We did. We had him we had him over. Oh, yeah, the night before we saw you he went to our first one. Oh, great. Oh, great.

Yeah. And he's [00:20:00] awesome. Yeah. We, we, we should probably have him on the podcast. But, but his

More Births: point, and it's a point that I think you guys have made also is that one aspect of Of parenting. That's important for from a pronatal perspective is for it to be easy. Like, you can't, you can't have this high impact helicopter parenting and, and have six kids as I do.

I mean, we were, we, we, we probably did a, a more careful detailed bit of work with our older ones than we, than we you know, but it, it, it, it's fine. And they actually get to be a more responsible and they, and more, more confident. You know, my, my, my 17 year old took one of the cars and she's, I, I don't know, I don't even, I don't think any of us even know where she is.

And, and that's, she's, she's, she's, she's, she's trustworthy and she's very responsible, so it's okay. And, but, but, you know, we can't, it is impossible. To helicopter her. I, [00:21:00] I don't have, I don't have the capacity. Yeah, and that is

Simone Collins: to your point, to her benefit. Also, helicoptering really does, like, I was just thinking today about how I introduced foods to our first kid.

Of like, I pureed the food at home. I spoon fed everything. Nothing went in the mouth. Nothing was swallowed. Like, and it was very stressful and very expensive. And now like with our kids, I just give them like stuff to chew on when they're teething and then just let them hand feed. With non choking hazard foods when they feel like it and I don't worry about it and it's so much more sustainable and that's just like all across the board.

So it isn't, but again, that's culture, but I didn't want to mention,

More Births: I didn't want to mention as well, you know, talk about, you know, urbanization, as I say, I, I'm part of the urban category and, you know, having a house in the suburbs is not the, is not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking, you can have pretty good density.

In the suburbs. What I'm talking about is these these high rise like we saw the man like [00:22:00] soul like Sydney, where the suburbs of Sydney have have quite healthy fertility, and it's that urban core, and you can argue why and there is an intersection. I do want to mention that there is. I do agree that there's an intersection with culture there.

Malcolm Collins: This didn't used to be the case. And I point this out to people, like people are like, Oh, city's always low fertility. That's, that's not true. Like there have been periods of immigration in the United States where everyone was like, ha, ha, ha, the Irish, you know, it's always like. Five families living in one house was tons of kids.

Like there have been periods in history where urban centers had high fertility rates, but they were always periods, not where urban centers had larger houses, but where there were cultures in those urban centers that normalized sharing the space.

More Births: Well, yeah, so no, you're, you're, you're right. Fertility has been, you know, fertility in during the during the baby boom in New York City was above three.

So, so, so you can, but, but I do want to emphasize what I was saying before is that is that we have [00:23:00] kind of a confluence of fertility. You know, modern expectations say that, you know, if a, if a boy is, is above like toddler age and a girl is above toddler age, they're supposed to each have a separate room and separate from their parents.

Yeah, I do agree that you know, having a lighter hand and having, you know, a lot more flexibility about these things is a great idea, but I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm also, you know, reporting things as they are. This is, this is the norm that we have. And in this, in this norm, you know, having a bunch of kids in an apartment is, Just not done it is it is not almost non existent In a great way that you could fix this and

Malcolm Collins: this is something that i'd love to do You know if we have a ton more kids like we go for mass production is vertical We need to do is get the like a bar that can support them and then basically just hang them [00:24:00] in bags so we can Okay

More Births: Bat cave or something like that.

Malcolm Collins: Meat hooks, meat hooks. Push a button and it goes, there's you, back and I hook up. No,

Simone Collins: we, we used to joke that we were gonna go to old morgues and buy the the drawers. You know, just pull out bets. Wait, Simone, I don't remember

Malcolm Collins: this cause I

Simone Collins: would

Malcolm Collins: have done

Simone Collins: that. And we've joked about that like a billion times every time we watch some kind of,

Malcolm Collins: Well, can you put like a an alert for this?

I want my kids to sleep in the morgue, George. We can pull them out. Your reporters would go apoplectic about this. But let's see more stats here, Dan.

More Births: I, I, okay. You, you want to see more on, on, on density? Yeah,

Simone Collins: then I also want to talk about, But the elements of the fertility stack, because I am curious, you, you ran us through it when we were in DC, but I want to hear

Malcolm Collins: the part of the recap of it.

Density wise, that density is okay. What you need is a cultural tradition of living in different levels of density at different stages of your life, [00:25:00] which is what I was raised with. And if you had this cultural tradition, which I believe we actually have, it's just Some people have forgotten it because we don't pass on our culture.

Well anymore. It's it's it's obvious to people Oh, I go in the city when i'm young and looking for a spouse and then I leave the city and have kids after that and yet you know One of the things I heard that really got me is you're supposed to go to a city and run Now people go to a city and sit and and they don't understand why their lives end up becoming a disaster But yes, tell me about this.

More Births: Okay, so this this is you know for for cities around the world You you know, I found and again, I'm trying to simply report things as I see them. You

know,

I'm trying to be a referee here and just present the data. 11 thing. That is a very strong correlation. Is that the higher the share of apartments as a fraction of total housing, you know, the lower the fertility rate.

So you have places, you [00:26:00] know, like China and Korea, Spain. Also, Italy. Also where almost all of the housing is apartments, they tend to have lower fertility and places on the other end of the spectrum, like, you know, you know, Atlanta is a good example where, you know, Almost all of the housing is houses.

You know, fertility you know, it is much higher. So

Malcolm Collins: sorry. Does anyone here believe that Paris has a higher fertility rate than Atlanta or Dallas? That seems unbelievable to me.

More Births: Well, you know, France overall has a, has, has a relatively high fertility. Well, there's a couple of things about Paris. I do believe that.

I do believe that data point because Paris has a very high proportion of Muslim immigrants. So I think that Well, I'm

Simone Collins: Catholic, right? I mean,

More Births: Catholicism helps. Yeah, but No,

Malcolm Collins: Catholicism doesn't help. Well, I think,

More Births: I think what we could be seeing in Paris, we could be seeing a strong effect [00:27:00] of Muslim immigrants.

Malcolm Collins: So in a lot of people, I'm sorry, I need to be clear about the stats here around Paris. France typically has a uniquely high fertility rate among its white population as well. It is not just the immigrants that are boosting it. Yeah, they, they probably have an effect. You're absolutely right about that.

But it also has a uniquely high native

More Births: fertility rate. Yeah, and France, you know, one thing that's really cool about France is we, we, I'm, I'm hearing baby industry there, right? Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm going to mute myself. That's wonderful to hear. You know, me and baby industry hung out and we, I got her to sleep, but at our last meetup, she's your

Simone Collins: biggest fan.

I think she, she can probably hear you and be like, Where's my Dan?

More Births: Right. So, but you know, what, one thing I want to say in Paris or in France's favor, is that, is it the French leaders like have no problem just saying like, Hey guys, for the sake of the nation, like everybody, please have more [00:28:00] children and like in, in the Anglosphere.

Like in England that would be gauche and like completely embarrassing. Like the French Prime Minister, and not just Macron, but like every French Prime Minister since World War II has said that. That, you know, it's important to Have children and you know, to, and to, but don't you,

Malcolm Collins: don't you like being in a subversive movement?

Like for American culture, isn't it even better that I can say have more children and it's subversive and cool and rebel? Like,

More Births: yeah, no, I, yeah, there, there is something, something cool about that to, to be the, the underground, the pro rebel

Malcolm Collins: beat the system out

More Births: pronatalist underground, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, you got to have we will replace you as our slogan.

Yeah. I'm a very

More Births: big tent kind of guy. So that's my own, but, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, Simone, can we, can we talk to, to Kevin Dullard about making natalist clothes, make the [00:29:00] slogan? We will replace you.

More Births: Oh boy. Anyway but yeah, no, I do, I do want to emphasize. That the density and apartment living is not the only thing, but in order to I, as far as I can tell, in order to have healthy fertility and live in an apartment or a dense configuration, you really have to have a very pronatal culture.

So Israel has that, you know, 1 example that people give is that you have a high fertility in the. You know, one of the more dense places on earth is the Nile Delta, like around Cairo, Egypt, but mostly, you know, and that's true. You do have high fertility. You also have a high, I just saw data just this week that the, the per, the percentage of the population that believes in pure Sharia law is like [00:30:00] 80 some percent in Egypt.

It's like a hair. It's a smidgen higher than in Afghanistan.

Simone Collins: Whoa!

More Births: In Egypt? What happened? So like the, the common man in Egypt what is very extremely hardcore, like fundamentalist Islam.

Okay.

Your man on the street in Egypt. Yeah. So there's an interesting like political point here, which is you know, the, you know, our American leadership had the, had the idea that we need to knock off the military dictatorship in Egypt in order so that the people can get, you know, can be free.

And so you can have a liberal society. Actually, the military dictatorship was the reason for the liberal society because they were, they were keeping a lid on like, unlike the, the extreme radical fundamentalism that, that, that's the, that's like actually the, the core belief of like 80 percent of the population.

Simone Collins: That's one, it's such an interesting contrast to [00:31:00] Iran, which has so lost God, despite the government really trying to impose it. We did an episode on this, it's something like

Malcolm Collins: only like 26% of the population still identifies as religious and only like, 40% believes in, in like heaven. Yeah. And so this

More Births: is the power of grassroots culture.

This is a strong a strong data point in support of your, your, your theory of people rebelling against the government in a way. Because, because in Egypt you had a secular government and, and a grassroots that's like. You know, fervently religious and in Iran, you, you, you have had the opposite effect where you had a, a theocratic group on top.

And this is the point I

Malcolm Collins: am, I am like, like a lightning rod about, it is so important that people get it through their heads, that if you attempt to enforce, through laws and through government, religious systems, it is the worst thing you could conceivably do for it. It's going to

Simone Collins: [00:32:00] backfire if you make government do it.

Malcolm Collins: But for your religion, if you, if you want more extreme evangelical Christians or more Catholics, porn bans. We'll have the exact opposite effect. If you want more of that banning gay marriage, we'll have the exact opposite effect. Anything you attempt to do to heavy handedly enforce your religious values on a society has the effect of killing that religion within that society.

You can see this in the data. It is just an overwhelmingly powerful effect. But what I want to hear here, and this is something, you know, when we're talking about all of this, where I'm like, Oh my God, it is so important that people get it is the culture. And family culture, not about enforcing culture from the government, but like you have to take responsibility, i.

e. you cannot be like, Oh, the government will like ban porn and like, my kids will be fine or whatever. Like, how do you personally teach your kids when it's okay to get married, what's their sexuality, et cetera. And I [00:33:00] think if you don't take this culture first mindset. It's very easy. And I see this even with members of the prenatalist movement to say, I'm just going to raise my kids the way my grandparents, you know, like, IE, like we're going to go back to the way things were in the 1950s and 1940s and I'll raise them in that format.

And within a household that's operating within that format and they'll be fine. And I'm like, no, they won't. They won't. All deconvert you, you can see this in the data. You'll, you'll keep like one of your kids. And if we don't like hold that in front of people's faces, like you can't just do things the way you used to, you can't just enforce these values on people.

Then they end up focusing on this little stuff. Like, well, you know, I'm a traditional Christian and I'm trying to make, you know, housing smaller, you know what I mean? Like housing barrier.

More Births: Well, I do want to say the, the, in the data, housing. You know, does seem to matter quite a bit. So I don't want to dismiss it.

I don't want the other thing, you know, I don't want to say it doesn't matter. I'm not, I'm not going to say it's the most important thing, but I'm not the other. The other reason that [00:34:00] I stick to housing so much or that I mentioned housing quite a bit is that it's, it's so lasting. And if You know, these where you have a sea of urban high rises, you know, almost everywhere in the world that you see that you see, you know, fertility rates extremely low, usually below one.

I mean, so, so that that type of that level of density in the data, it just looks it looks very bad. But I, I will agree that the pronatalist culture is the, is a trump card that can overcome. You know, a whole lot and that's

Malcolm Collins: where people live is largely culturally influenced, right? Like, okay. If you're more urban monoculture minded, if the urban monoculture has infested your mindset more, you're more likely to live near an urban center.

And I, and I understand, like, it's one of these things to me where it's like, but I'm able to live in an urban center without that affecting me. I just don't [00:35:00] know if like smaller houses affect, or I have seen any evidence. And I mean, any evidence at all. That, that, that smaller living spaces affect already high fertility subgroups.

More Births: I did see, and I don't have it in front of me and I wish I did, but, but Limestone did find that even for Orthodox Jews, he found that even for Orthodox Jews, they had higher fertility when they lived in the New York suburbs than they did in, in the, So even

Malcolm Collins: cross traditions, cause that's the thing that really get it when I mean track across.

I don't, I think it's really like silly and I basically personally ignore any graph that's like people currently living in the center of Manhattan have a few kids. I'm like, obviously. Right. But what I want to see is people who have ever lived in the center of Manhattan, how does that affect their fertility rate?

Because again, I think that this is a life stage thing.

More Births: Well, you know, I had an interesting [00:36:00] conversation, which I. You know, with like a, a young professional I, I, I kind of did a, a tour of newly built apartments in, in Bethesda Rockville near, near where I live. And I was talking to people, you know, first of all one notable thing is that among, you know, I, I, I went there and I acted like I was Somebody looking for a three bedroom apartment and I went to the rental office and I asked and four different newly built towers that I visited had zero three bedroom apartments in the entire building.

I mean, I don't mean,

I don't mean none. I don't mean zero three bedrooms available to rent. I mean, I mean, the building was constructed with no units being more than two.

Simone Collins: That makes sense because from an investment standpoint, The understanding of the real estate market is this basically three plus bedroom houses are the worst possible investment because there is a.

Glut of that inventory from boomers becoming [00:37:00] empty nesters and moving out of their three plus bedroom houses is big downsize and then there's this massive population of dinks or one kid couples or families That only want two bedroom or can afford two bedroom houses and spaces. Yeah. Well, I don't I

More Births: I'm not I'm, not a developer.

I have a There's a developer that I'm communicating sometimes with on X.

Yeah. His

name is Bobby Feigen and I want to talk to him more about what exactly are the economic reasons, but it's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty dramatic fact that, that all over America, you know, three bedroom and larger apartments are built at all.

And I think it, I think it, I think it has something to do with the fact you get more, more paying renters per square foot, stuff like that. It may have something to do with rules around, you know, fire escapes and egresses and things like that. I'm not, I'm not sure. I really think it's about

Simone Collins: demographic trends.

More Births: It could be. I [00:38:00] don't, I don't want to say why they're, they're doing this, but this is what they are doing. They are, they are almost exclusively building like studios and ones and twos almost exclusively. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that totally makes sense. Yeah. And

More Births: so I talked to a, a, a guy who he was a graduate of, of UVA top graduate, high income, married.

He ha he and his wife happily married. He and his wife have one kid. He, he said he stopped at one. They live in a two bedroom apartment in one of these buildings. He said they would like to have four children. But he doesn't feel like he could do it in the space that he has. He said, if I had a single family home, I would I would love to have four children.

And I'm like, Holy s**t.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the point, right? Like he doesn't feel like he, I mean, obviously he can do it in the space he has, but the cultural expectations lead him not to feel like he can do it in the space he has.

More Births: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

More Births: Yeah. That, that, yeah. So you're, you, you have a, you have a good point in the, in the past people.

[00:39:00] Would put a lot of people in, in a, you know, Lincoln's log cabin, probably one, one room probably had, you know, the entire family, plus grandma and, and uncle Jethro or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: But what I, what I guess I'm saying here is, look, you can, you can choose to fight. Like you're, you're choosing like a slider, like where do I place my fight on this particular issue?

Right. Why would I place any fight in the getting larger, cheaper apartments when I know that like, that fight is almost impossible to win, but the culture fight is at an individual, intentionally prenatal individual, pretty easy to win.

More Births: I, I, I hear you. That's, that is a, that is a good point. I, I do wanna.

Yeah, I am very troubled by by East Asia. I'm very troubled by Asia and the fact that they seem to have painted themselves into a corner with like basically 100 percent of their housing being, [00:40:00] I would say, Unsuitable to families by modern norms. And I mean, maybe it's possible to get people to have, you know, to, to, to put like six, seven people in one room again.

But

Malcolm Collins: I

More Births: want to

Malcolm Collins: elaborate on a point that you were making because you've, you've made it before more completely. Which is to say housing is very durable. You know, once you've built all of this housing, that's the way it is. So in East Asia, you can't be like, oh, you need to change all your housing to make it like bigger.

Like the housing is already there. Right. And it's going to be there for another 30, 40 years.

More Births: Right. So that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a problem. If, and you know, one thing I want to mention the fastest growth. Like of any country that, as far as I know, the fastest demographic growth of any country in history was that was the United States in the early part of its history.

So America went from like, I think about 3 million, [00:41:00] I may get this number. Not exactly right, but from about 3 million in 1776 to about 76 million in the year 1900. So just

Simone Collins: mostly, mostly, mostly birth rates, not immigration. That's right. That's exactly right.

Malcolm Collins: It was an average in our area, I think in the 1800s, it was an average of 14 children per woman.

Oh my goodness. We went

More Births: for it. Yo! And the thing that I do want to, there's a couple of things that were happening there. So, so the culture element was a big piece of it. You had these, you had these these great awakenings like round after round of great awakenings in the United States that, that, that, that re infused Americans with this fervent religiosity.

But another thing you had is the pioneer culture where. Where people and I could see this in my own ancestry. I, I had a, a lovely family friend who, who traced my family's ancestry back. I have, I have some of my ancestry goes back [00:42:00] to the Mayflower and you could see you could see that people you know, people would constantly, we're constantly going West and they would, they would stay in one place for like a couple of years and.

And then, and then everybody would go further west and you know, constantly spread out on new territory. And that seems to, you know, this, this abundant space and the ability to spread out seems to have been one of the factors that, that, that did play a role in America's Ability to expand so quickly demographically.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, I'd point out here that what really killed American demographics from this perspective, right. And I actually think when you talk about East Asian fertility rates and you're talking about cultural norms, you know, Oh, it was modern cultural norms. So. So let's let's like study where these cultural norms came from.

If you look at during our period of rapid growth, it was common even in the frontier. So you can look at our house, which was built originally on the frontier. It was originally built as like a stone house by one guy. And if you look at the way the house is divided in the way the [00:43:00] rooms are used, so you can see where like the piping goes at one point.

Four different families were living in this one house. They were all related, like brother, sister, et cetera, you know, so like you would marry someone while you were still living with your parents and then you divide your house up among all the siblings or something and then go out of one of you made a lot of money.

And, and so what changed this cultural norm? It was World War Two. After World War Two basically America had this big economic boom largely unsustainable. It was because it was exploiting the rest of the world. And This economic boom is where concepts like the possibility of a nuclear family were born, i.

e. a husband goes out and supports the rest of the family on one income. This is not the norm anywhere historically. This was just a result of an economic boom that happened in America due to a cheat code. That was basically like Europe's factories are all destroyed. And you know, all the everywhere else in the world that could produce high tech stuff had destroyed their economies.

And so we could you know, really gain from that. So we had this ultra luxurious lifestyle. A