The Mysterious Fertility Strip Running Down the Center of the USA

Join in this intriguing discussion as the hosts delve into the perplexing phenomenon of a high-fertility strip running from Texas to North Dakota. They explore various theories and data, including maps of fertility rates, immigration patterns, income levels, religious census, and more. Does this strip represent America's final frontier or a hub of conservative, religious communities? Tune in to explore the intersection of demographics, geography, and culture in the U.S.

The song:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing a bizarre B, bizarre, bizarre phenomenon where there is, if you look at the county level, total fertility rate in the United States.

There is an extremely high fertility, I mean, extremely high fertility. When you look at the rest of the map, nothing comes close to the strips. Fertility rate strip down basically like where the west side of Texas is. Mm-hmm. All the way up to the top of the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like from the Texas panhandle up basically directly up from there is this weird blue strip.

Malcolm Collins: And so like, obviously I'm gonna have a map on screen here that you guys can look at and be like, what is going on here? One of the people who dug into it was friend of the show, Robin Hansen. 'cause of course, like if somebody's looking at interesting questions, it's like always gonna be one of our like small friend groups.

I sometimes wondered, it's like not everyone else programmed in [00:01:00] this simulation like Uhhuh because it like 20 people who are fully programmed and they're all guests of the show. And then everyone, you gotta save

Simone Collins: processing power. This stuff's expensive. I mean, so yeah, I'm very, so if, okay, what, before we go into what he thinks is going on, what are you gonna guess?

Is it that like these are very low population rural states? I mean, we're looking at North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas a little bit. There's

Malcolm Collins: lots of low population rural states that would not explain this at all.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So. I'm gonna guess it's either one of two things.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Thing number one that it could be is it could be actually a mistake in the data.

Okay. It could be something about how these are like near a date line or how these are near, some lines are done. So some zone

Simone Collins: where measured twice because of like weird, it's causing

Malcolm Collins: things to be measured twice. That's hypothesis number one. Hmm. Because it just [00:02:00] doesn't seem realistic when I look at other things here.

But then I think, okay, like I'm from Texas, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: These districts do not, not make sense as to why they would be higher fertility. They are incredibly rural districts. Yeah, that's

Simone Collins: what I was thinking too rural and that's where you get those, I mean, it's, it's, there's a selection bias there, right?

You're getting. People who want big families who are probably more likely to be religious conservative, who have this space. And of course there's all these pretty advocate space

Malcolm Collins: problem. Problem was this explanation.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The districts actually remind me most of places like Arizona or Western California, which is way below these districts in terms of fertility rate.

Simone Collins: That's true. Yeah. Why would those not also show up as Yeah, why would those,

Malcolm Collins: they're just as conservative. They're just as, so the other thing that it could be is immigration patterns is the other thing I I, I'd hypothesize here.

Simone Collins: Interesting. It

Malcolm Collins: could be that if you look at this, this is, if you're looking at immigration waves moving west mm-hmm.

This is [00:03:00] where pretty much everyone would stop when hitting the Rockies. Oh. So if you're just gonna continue to move west mm-hmm. Until you hit the Rockies, immigration wise that's what would lead to this line. This is the most, I wanted to get away from other people and live my own way of all people in the United States make up this line.

I. That could be what we're seeing. Hmm. And then people could be like, well, what about that, like edge of Texas thing? Like, that's not the Rockies. And I'd say, well, that's the desert. Yeah. So let's, let's have a look here. What is, what is the first thing that he notes here? He says it's really weirdly along the mountain time and central time, time zone divider.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What is up with that?

Malcolm Collins: If you overlaid them, it looks so suspicious. That's why I think it could be a statistical error because Okay. That divider, if, if you look, and I'm comparing them on screen here. Yeah. Goes through the center of South Dakota [00:04:00] there. And the line moves from where it is on this map towards the center of South Dakota which is weird.

Why is it doing that? Yeah. This to me indicates that it might be some sort of statistical error.

Simone Collins: Yes. But then when we scroll down a little bit more, Y vert, who's so prolific on x suggests that it's a combination of being rural and high income, showing an American community survey of five year estimates showing medium household median household income for counties that are completely rural from 2013 to 2017.

And there's also exactly where the fertility strip is. A concentration. I, I actually income above

Malcolm Collins: $75,000. So I, I think that this graph is entirely hugely misleading. So let's talk about why it's misleading, because there's something you might not be noticing about it because it draws your eyes in and you're like, oh, okay, this could [00:05:00] explain it.

Mm-hmm. But what you're not counting is really almost all of the colored in places on the map at all. Or in this strip. Hmm. That's why it looks so green, because it's not looking at the whole of the us. It's only looking at rural counties. And so what we're actually seeing here is for whatever reason this strip in the United States has far more consistent rural counties than any other strip in the United States.

Simone Collins: Hmm. But then the

Malcolm Collins: question is, is how are rural counties being counted here? Because I know for a fact that these places aren't particularly more rural than you know, places in Arizona, for example, which is shown as that having a single rural county or. Eastern California, not shown as having a single rural county or New Mexico shown as having almost no rural counties.

Yeah, that's, I'm sorry, that's, I don't buy that. There, there's something about the way this map is structured that I think is trying to prove a point. And I [00:06:00] don't know how they fudge the data, but I can tell you there are rural countries in Arizona. Yes, Ariz, Arizona is not a populated place. There's like a few like medium sized cities in it.

But like if I was trying to date in Arizona, I'd be like, but nobody lives in Arizona. Yeah. You know, so something's off. Something's off about that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, now, now Crem U comes in by the way which I