Malcolm Debates @MoreBirths on Fertility Stats

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm sit down with Daniel Hess, the man behind the popular Twitter account @MoreBirths, to discuss the critical role of culture in shaping fertility rates across the world. Daniel shares fascinating examples from France, Mongolia, North Korea, and Israel to illustrate how cultural attitudes, leadership, and historical events have influenced birth rates. The conversation also delves into the insidious influence of anti-natalist propaganda in American and Canadian schools, and the potential solutions to combat the demographic collapse.

Dan Hess: [00:00:00] this organization called Population Connection. Ooh, interesting. Okay. So this, okay, this is crazy. This is insane, but this is, you wouldn't believe it except that it's true. And

, they have these workshops where they train teachers and he has trained on the order of like a hundred thousand teachers in America over the years through this organization, which is active today. And it educates in American and Canadian schools, 3 million students a year. So, so, and, and what we see here is an example from their most popular video. So he, he has this, this thing that starts in the year one. So you can see the header on top shows, this is the world population in the year one, like as in the time of the Romans and, and like when Jesus walked the earth and stuff like that.

So this is 170 million. So that's the baseline that he's using to show overpopulation now, because this is like the [00:01:00] popular, this is less than. The current population of, so that's what

Malcolm Collins: we need to go back to. It's, is it Roman times pre industry?

Dan Hess: Of course. Yes. That's what we want. This video that he has, like, like it shows like an, a little exploding bomb.

Okay. In, in every, every time, like there, there's more population added. And so it literally looks like the world of today is like on fire with people. And this is the education that's, that's going out under the guise of environmentalism to like millions of students.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hi everyone. I am so excited today to have a very, very special guest, Danielle, who we've always really known and who you might know already as more births on Twitter. This is our. Favorite demographic collapse account.

Daniel, you have the most thoughtful threads. You are very passionate about demographic collapse, but also very articulate and focused on the data. So we're super excited to have you on because you often look at elements of the data and elements of demographic collapse that [00:02:00] we're not talking about as much.

And I think we have a lot to dig into, so let's just do it. But as a big reminder to everyone, if you aren't already following MoreBirths on Twitter. Do it now because these

Malcolm Collins: are on Twitter while you're

Simone Collins: at it. I mean, yeah, we're there too at most.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Because we haven't changed.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, let's dive into the data because that's what our fans are all about is data.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So let's, we first wanted to discuss And this is something that came from your very good suggestion, Daniel. So thank you. Culture and examples of countries that achieved a more prenatal culture, because we were really good on this podcast and talking about the failure cases, but maybe we can go through something a little more encouraging.

Dan Hess: Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to. And you know, that's, that's something I really, really try hard to do. Is to focus on, on, on the data because, because everybody has their own opinions on what the, what the cause of the fertility collapse are. And there's a lot of causes, but you know, [00:03:00] I, I try, I try to be minimalist as far as my own opinions and maximalist as, as, as far as the data.

So here's, I want to you know, go, go right into things. So the first thing I want to talk about is the cultural impact of fertility because culture is really the dominant factor. Much more, you know, and you've, you guys have talked about this a lot on this on base camp is, is that you know, the, the impact of incentives is, is, is not enough.

It's not enough that you need, you need culture. So here. So I want to go through different examples of, of how, of how culture makes a difference. And so here's, I'm going to try to share something. I'll bring it up. Yeah, let's. Okay. So what we're seeing here. So what this is, can we see this? Now we can.

So here we're talking about France. So this is the, this is one of my favorite examples of the power of culture. So what we see is fertility, basically fertility in the [00:04:00] 1800s in France versus fertility today. So France had a huge, culture change in the 1800s, you know, long before anybody else. So, so France ended up with like super low fertility in, you know, starting with the French revolution.

So

Malcolm Collins: clarify, because a lot of our audience listens only audio. So do keep that in mind when you're describing what's in the graph.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Yeah. Go for like what we're, what we're looking at.

Dan Hess: So what we're seeing in this is two, two maps of Europe side by side with you know, fertility in the 1800s and fertility in 2019.

So very recently. So what we see in the 1800s is that. France has fertility, like a whole order of magnitude less than the rest of Europe. And that, that was the result of the French revolution and secularization. And you can know this from, [00:05:00] you can know that that's what was going on because you can look at like, You can look at the records that people left behind of, of wills and whether it was like a church will or a secular will.

And it went from like, it went from like, like 90 percent church type wills or religious type wills to like 90 percent secular. So it was an extreme secularization that happened in France after the French revolution. And they ended up with like the lowest fertility in Europe by a mile. Now

Malcolm Collins: I want to be clear to people who are looking at this.

What's interesting about the 1800s map is it doesn't. by county and not just by country. And yet you can see that by county, there is a very sort of tight line around France. So it's not like you get a cultural bleed or much of a cultural bleed in the border regions. Which is very interesting as it means that legalistic changes within France, likely.

We're precipitated this cultural change that he's [00:06:00] describing. And I've seen other compelling evidence that it really was the secularization. I don't know what piece I might be thinking of. You probably know the one I'm thinking of where somebody argued with a lot of data that it really was specifically the secularization that caused France early fertility collapse.

Dan Hess: Yeah, you can, you can you can find stuff like that. Actually, if you, if you. If you go to more births on Twitter and you do a search of at more births, and you know, for example, France you know, you're gonna, you know, you'll find stuff where I linked to that, that particular study from which this map is taken.

So then we can see in 2019. You can see the fertility rate in all the European countries. And France has the highest fertility rate in all of Europe. So, France went from the lowest to the highest. Now it's still below replacement, but this is a massive difference. So this

Malcolm Collins: you do you have a theory on this?

Because I,

Dan Hess: