How the iPhone Drove Men and Women Apart
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What are the stakes of declining fertility?
From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. 50 years ago, the world feared a population bomb, an explosion of population growth that would yield famine, war, and disaster. But for most of my career, I've been trying to persuade people that actually population decline is now the greater peril. And in the last few years, the world has finally caught up with my once eccentric anxieties. We're undeniably headed towards a period of global population collapse, one that threatens to maroon today's children, mine and yours if you have them, which, by the way, you should, in a world of emptying cities and slowing economies.
What is Alice's master theory for why birth rates are falling?
Our guest today has literally traveled the world studying this issue, trying to answer the hardest question. Not just why birth rates have declined, but why they've declined so far and so fast in so many different places. So, Alice Evans, welcome to Interesting Times.
Indeed, thank you so much.
How does technology contribute to the coupling crisis?
So you're a sociologist at King's College London, is that correct? Yes. And you write a lot about, and I think you're working on a book, about the key social forces shaping the decline in fertility around the world. And those include, in particular... The failure of men and women to relate to one another and pair off. And those issues are part of why I'm especially interested in talking to you.
What role does digital segregation play in relationships?
But before we dive into why population decline is happening. I'd like to try and sort of quantify the issue a little bit and maybe help sound the alarm for some of our listeners who, unlike myself, haven't been obsessed with this issue for years or decades and may still assume that we're living in a world where the biggest problem is likely to be overpopulation. So let's start out. When we talk about declining fertility and population decline, what do we mean by
Okay, so fertility is collapsing everywhere all at once, perhaps with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, where rates are still very high. But across Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, all those trends are going sharply downwards. And And economically, this has catastrophic implications for middle income countries, because as you have an aging population, then older people typically have lower rates of labor force participation. They're less economically productive. You know, it's the young people who are. you know, innovative, productive, starting up new companies. But as the entire economy ages, then it becomes more sluggish. And those younger people, either through savings or taxes, need to pay for elderly health care or pension costs or provisions. And that then creates a massive fiscal squeeze because governments or individuals need to spend a higher amount of their money given those rising dependency rates.
And if we're concerned with things like climate change mitigation, the governments just won't have enough money to spend on extra costs if you're spending more on old people. And on top of this, if younger people are saving more, as they are in China, then they're going to be spending less. So that has a knock-on effect on the entire economy.
And when did you become interested in the fertility crisis? You started out working on gender equality, the socioeconomic status of women in developing countries. How did this issue, which I should say it has long been the province of, you know, to be kind to ourselves, right wing cranks, right? How did this issue become a big part of your focus?
What can bring men and women back together?
So I think fertility and women's choices and men's choices about how many children they want, that's always come up in my interviews because I'm always interested, you know, what do you want to do for your life? So I've got so much data on this going back for the past 15 years. You know, when I was in Zambia, women would always encourage me to have another baby. Oh, you must have a baby. You must have a baby. That was so imperative for them.
This is what I say to my colleagues, too. So it's, you know, it's not just Zambia.
So I was constantly pestered. And then I think in East Asia, in South Korea, where I was looking at the data so intensely and I was having so many of my interviews and I just realized it was so omnipresent. And then I looked at the data more broadly. So I think going to South Korea is really what fertility pilled me, so to speak.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What are the stakes of declining fertility?
0:02–1:08
2
What is Alice's master theory for why birth rates are falling?
1:08–1:32
3
How does technology contribute to the coupling crisis?
1:32–1:57
4
What role does digital segregation play in relationships?
1:57–4:07
5
What can bring men and women back together?
4:07–4:48
6
Can Hollywood help fix the relationship crisis?
4:48–5:10
7
Can government policies effectively incentivize childbirth?
5:10–5:38
8
What impact does religion have on fertility rates?
5:38–54:01
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Interesting Times
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