Two centuries and a half ago, two world regions had a fertility revolution. Soon after, they both had a political revolution. These facts are connected.
A note on language you might want to consider being more accurate about: Fertility RATE = # of children born to each woman whereas fertility = capability to reproduce. I think most of the time you either mean fertility rate OR reproduction = production of offspring, not that biologically women are less physically able to reproduce. "Fertility rate drop" does not equal "fertility drop," a different metric that would not be measured by number of people.
Very interesting piece. Near the beginning did you mean to say that fertility has decreased because the cost:benefit ratio has INCREASED (rather than decreased) since cost has increased and benefit decreased? The common link between New England (really the American colonies) and France is the Enightenment. The founders were heavily influenced by French Enlightenment thinkers of the early 18th century. I think the suggestion that secularization decreased fertility is reasonable, but it seems likely that decreased child mortality and urbanization also contributed. Something as complex as fertiltilty is not likely to have a single causal explanation. As a biologist I see benefits to a decrease in the global population of humans in terms of less habitat destruction, pollution, release of greenhouse chemicals, and loss of biodiversity. But as the father of two kids I understand the societal disruption that decreased population will cause. If the US wants to reverse the trend, it could take actions to make it less expensive to raise kids, like universal child tax credit, quality pre-K, pre and post-natal health care, affordable preventive heath care, and free/subsidized post high school education or vocational training. The US makes it costly and difficult to raise kids if you're not wealthy, and the lack of universal access to good health care pre and post natal gives the US the highest child mortality rate of any developed country. Not conducive to increased fertility.
One of the future articles will address the economic measures for fertility. The short: we should do some, but it can’t be all.
You’re right on the cost-benefit.
Child mortality and urbanization did NOT contribute, as these were happening all over Western Europe and yet only France was going through the fertility transition. I think the article addresses that. Maybe not clearly enough?
I will address the cost-benefit of a growing population in a future article.
As standards of living improved and people moved from the farm to the city, the economic value of kids dropped because they were not productive free farm workers anymore.
As sanitation improved, fewer children died, so parents didn’t need to overshoot by having more kids to make sure they had enough support during their retirement.
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When fewer children die more of them make it to the teen years. So having fewer kids gets the same net help from teenagers. This means each young child has a higher value - at least in the agrarian setting - and you need fewer of them.
However, since it might be ten years before the community was confident of the improved mortality it could be a decade or two before the fertility dropped.
Economics: the more valuable a kid (economically), the more kids you’ll have.
Healthcare: High mortality means overshooting, independently from economics. You want 2 surviving kids and child mortality is 30%? You might have 3. But if child mortality is 1%, you might only have 2.
I am a biologist as well, and I think that the connection between a decrease in human population and benefits for the environment is overstated. It implies an assumption that each one of us have the same "carbon footprint" and the same decision power. The move to the urban areas, which are environmentally more efficient, is still increasing. I don't think that habitat destruction is driven by overpopulation, not even indirectly.
It's not just about carbon footprint - also air, groundwater, land and ocean pollution, pesticide use, wastes and landfill, limited natural resources, un-sustainable consumption systems. Most of the footprint of supply chains of cities occurs outside the cities themselves.
Thanks, I am aware of all that. I used "carbon footprint" as a catchall for negative impacts on the environment. Again, who decides? Or rather, who choses again and again to disregard externalities?
I am no population expert, but all along while reading your piece, I kept thinking about Quebec and its "Quiet Revolution" or "Revolution tranquille." Quebec's government during the 1950s was dominated by Church and religious beliefs. This period, which Liberals baptized as "La grande noirceur" (The Great Obscurity), ended shortly after the death of prime minister Maurice Duplessis, and with the arrival to power of liberal Jean Lesage. Secularization, modernization and a sense of nationalism accompanied Lesage's government, and the birth rate started to plummet until becoming the lowest of Canada in the late 80s and early 90s. to the point that the provincial government was paying women up to 8,000 CAN $ for a third baby. It remains very low, but it seems to be slowly increasing. However, when comparing Quebec's birth rates with those of the US and Canada, they look pretty similar, so the drop in births in the 60s is a worldwide trend, most probably possible due to the arrival of female contraceptives. But still you might want to take a look at Quebec's case.
This was interesting to read. If a large part of the data that you used is from Nantucket then two variables come to mind that could affect your conclusions 1) The predominance of the Quaker faith on the island. I don't know if this supports or refutes your thesis but it should be considered https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/when-did-nantucketers-become-quakers/ 2) the Whaling industry which caused men to be away for years at a time
1760: By the end of the 1750s, Nantucket’s right whale population was badly depleted, and more and more whalers turned their attention to sperm whales, which were much faster, more aggressive, and required much longer trips to hunt. Larger boats were needed for the task. Because it was no longer realistic to tow each whale back to shore, ships also had to be large enough to allow blubber to be rendered and processed at sea.
1770s: As war was festering back home, Nantucket whaling vessels worked an ever-expanding territory that reached from the southern Falkland Islands north to the Arctic Circle, and along the North American, South American, and African coasts. Nantucket remained neutral during the American Revolution, in part because it had developed such a lucrative trading partnership with England. The island was routinely exempted from the restrictive trade laws of the period, such as the Massachusetts Bay Restraining Bill of 1774, which prohibited trade out of Boston and banned East Coast fisheries. Because Nantucket was considered by some to be too friendly with the English, some East Coast communities banned trade with the island.
interpreting the switch from 'right whales' to larger whales in the 1750s:
Bigger whales meant Larger boats with rendering the whale at sea rather than towing the 'right' whales and rendering on the beaches. The role of and need for children shifted - too small for sea duty and no help needed cutting up the whales on the beaches
Also with dad away sea for a longer time there would be fewer opportunities for the fertility events.
In the beginning of the 17th century, whaling on Nantucket was usually done from small boats launched from the island's shores, which would tow killed wales to be processed on the beach. These boats were only about seven meters long, with mostly Wampanoag manpower, sourced from a system of debt servitude established by English Nantucketers – a typical boat's crew had five Wampanoag oarsmen and a single white Nantucketer at the steering oar. Author Nathaniel Philbrick notes that "without the native population, which outnumbered the white population well into the 1720s, the island would never have become a successful whaling port".[16]
Nantucket's dependence on trade with Britain, derived from its whaling and supporting industries, influenced its leading citizens to remain neutral during the American Revolutionary War, favoring neither the British nor the Patriots.[23]
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In the same Wikipedia entry the population in 1790 (first US census) was 4,555. Not clear if that includes natives/indigenous
I’m late in joining the party, but that’s what an overflowing inbox does….
I hesitate on the parallel you propose between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. For me, the French revolution was about the desperately poor masses rising against an autocrat and the associated upper class. The American Revolution, resulting in the Declaration of Independence, was about the latter, Independence, in this case the independence of the then “American” upper class from what was indeed a physically distant king. If the members of this American upper class had been living in England, would they have kicked the king out? Or would they have been equally happy enjoying their wealth and social status as the French upper class? The poor masses in France saw the king and the upper class removed, but that in no way meant a dramatic improvement to their living conditions. The masses in America were ruled by the same upper class pre- and post-revolution, the new-found independence was benefiting the upper class, not the masses.
Hey! A frequent reader here. I like this topic but it seems to me that it is blind to gender inequalities. I can agree that fertility is heavily influenced by culture, but the culture that encouraged high fertility rates was based on women explotation. Perhaps it would be useful to explain in what ways you would convince others. You may want to explore the work of feminist economists on demography and care burden, especially Nancy Folbre
Well, there is a great introductory lecture on feminist economocs by Jayati Ghosh in YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okH4spiccz4 (be patient, she adresses the fall in child biths at the end). If you are aiming for bibliography reccs just let me know :)
I have been eagerly waiting for your articles on fertility so I am delighted to see them start.
What if fertility isn’t linked either to industrialisation/GDP per capita/religion but to education and access of health care ? Hans Rosling makes a pretty convincing argument about this both through his TED talk as well as the chapters in Factfulness.
I come from India, where it has been a common prejudice to say that Muslims (15% of population ) are going to take over with their high reproduction rate. It has been proven again and again that its not to do with religion but with education and health care access - especially of women.
I am surprised to see you build your entire case based on 1 country and 2 cities in England. What about taking examples of countries in the Middle East where religion is closely intertwined with governance ? I find your case weak because of this narrow sample. Am frankly surprised. You also included a graph with a sensational headline of “world population is shrinking” while the data only shows the population is expected to flatline in later part of the century. Rosling explains this trend of flatlining quite well. Flatlining is not shrinking, is it ?
Coming back to India. A country of 1.4 billion with 85% Hindu population. I dont think religion has played a deciding factor in fertility. My grandmother had 11 kids, 2 died. She was un-educated and driven by a KPI of producing boys (7 girls, 2 boys). To my knowledge, Hinduism isn’t obsessed about encouraging reproduction like the proselytising religions.
My mother had two - she was a working woman with complete access to modern health care and a full-time job with expectation to handle both home and work. This was also the time where govt successfully ran a national campaign to promote family planning -“ Us Two, Ours Two”. It was done subtly (unlike China). It became so ingrained in our sub-conscious as a society that we started looking down upon couples who would have more than 2 kids - the only “valid” excuse being if first two were girls. 2 was the gold standard for my parents generation. 1 child was considered lonely and unhealthy. More than 2 was considered “uneducated”. It wasn’t religion or lack of it that influenced my mother’s choice. It was the cultural narrative created by the govt. and practical pressures of balancing a job and family
I have two boys. But most of my friends (especially those in workforce) have chosen to have 1 kid. India doesn’t yet have an organised support system for raising young children. Joint families have broken down but the replacement infrastructure (quality crèches/day care) aren’t yet in place. Even with a progressive maternity leave (6 months), its complex for a woman to re-enter the workforce after two long breaks. We have a really low workforce rate for women - around 17%. After the first kid, it simply becomes a “sensible” decision for the modern working Indian woman to make a choice between career and second kid. Religion doesn’t shape our choice. My mother was more religious than me but our fertility rate is the same :) Very recently, India’s fertility dropped to less than 2 - it made news. Religion (or lack of it) has very little to do with it. The hardships of raising kids in urban jungles without the required support infrastructure do.
While I don’t find your logic compelling, I do agree with your overall idea that culture/ideas play a big role in fertility. What if Israel’s high fertility is a case, not of religion but, of a cultural narrative amongst a group of people whose ancestors have suffered great losses and are being encouraged to reproduce to counter that effect ?
At a philosophical level, I think a society where we lose the motivation to procreate is doomed. Am curious how societies are going to successfully re-engineer this motivation.
Looks like this is much closer to your expertise than mine (neuroscience, behavioral ecology), so point taken. But since fertility is dropping most rapidly among developed countries which have largest carbon footprint, don't you think there will lower total levels of energy consumption and less carbon and pollutant emission as a consequence? Asking, not asserting here!
The point it is not the individuals per capita using a fixed amount of energy, but the whole system of capital accumulation which benefits the top 3-4% (at most) of the whole people. Consider, for example, a million or two million people using the subway everyday are not consuming the energy in total of someone riding a giant truck with lots of oil consumption from state to state just for fun (over simplification, I know). The point, again, is that quite a lot of people can live much more sustainably and the issue to be addressed is the impact at the systems level and the activities with the highest impact may not have any relevancy to, desire from or relation to 80-90% of the people who may be living.
Another example: he carbon footprint of the food wasted at the system level in the richer economies is much more than the footprint of all the food consumed by a majority of the global population -> not necessarily a result of the number of people. Waste can increase even though the number of people served through the same agri-food system keeps going down and down.
Intriguing thing fertility. I am quite new to the subject and would appreciate whatever you might write.
BTW - you hooked me with the hammer/dance series.
I got curious about two facets - Nantucket and modern times.
In this post some views on Nantucket fertility and its relation to commercial activity.
Nantucket was a one-main-industry island in the 1700s - whaling.
They traded with England and were permitted to be neutral during the American Revolution so trading could continue.
Nantucket was considered to be a wealthy community.
Through the 1750s they hunted right whales. Right whales were close to shore and floated after death. They were then towed to the beach. The tribe of Wampanoag were the paddlers on these boats. Who did the rendering is not clear to me but I will guess that children above some age could be useful.
The right whale population declined substantially in the 1750s and Nantucket whaling shifted to Sperm whales. These were far out at sea and the rendering for oil occurred on the ship as the oil could be stored but the whale would decay.
This meant larger ships and long trips. Apparently a trip could take a year or more and a trip could cover all the way to the South Atlantic ocean. Not only were men gone a long time but sometimes the ship was lost at sea.
In 1763 some disease killed most of the Wampanoag on Nantucket. (Wikipedia)
Net: In the 1750-1800 period there were big changes and young men doing whaling were away from the island for a long time. Women and older men ran the trading.
Perhaps these items put downward pressure on fertility.
Some readings:
The Whaling Industry and Fertility Decline: Nantucket, Massachusetts 1660-1850
Barbara J. Logue
Social Science History
Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 427-456 (30 pages)
Published by: Cambridge University Press
The Case for Birth Control before 1850: Nantucket Reexamined
Barbara J. Logue
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter, 1985), pp. 371-391 (21 pages)
Thanks for your work on articles like this! Always quality research synthesized into a digestible story!
One thought I had: if secularization decreases fertility, does evangelization increase it? If so, you'd expect increase as Catholicism spread through Europe and in Latin America during Spanish colonization.
I have no idea! But it does sound like a fascinating question.
It all depends on the baseline fertility of natives.
One argument that Lyman Stone makes is that many civilizations in the past turned to having fewer kids, but they’re not here to tell us. So as a rule of thumb, most surviving societies should have had plenty of kids to counter child mortality (less they would go extinct).
Secularization was special because it came along with the scientific revolution, which increased incomes and sanitation, making societies with few kids viable where others would have gone extinct.
All of this to say that native Americans probably had plenty of kids and the Catholic Church might not have increased their fertility. But that’s just a guess
Hi Tomas, just to make sure your sources are complete.
I found the following book a super insightful read on population trends and why fertility changes: Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson: Empty Planet: The shock of global population decline. The authors, researchers from Canada make the case that the one factor at play is the education of the mother / women and both work out the correlation and why that matters.
They also show that most of the population trend charts and predictions we're confronted with from the likes of UN are not very competent because the underlying math is way too simple. It's a lot to read but could provide a lot of pointers to other sources.
Eventually the authors present a refined model to predict trends by putting nations into 5 categories and show how countries go through them.
I found this very well researched and explained. Hope that it helps you and others. To my surprise this book is not very well known or discussed.
It's a really interesting topic. As the saying goes - demography is destiny.
I'm looking to see where you go with population decline being a catastrophe. I hope you will really interrogate the environmental consequences of ever-increasing population growth. I know you're aware of the issue of ocean plastics. There is also groundwater and soil contamination, habitat destruction and species collapse, climate change, radioactive waste that is mutagenic for millions of years, overflowing landfills... We are basically living in a soup of carcinogenic chemicals (the Story of Stuff is a good summary - https://www.storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/) which is causing lasting damage to the DNA of humanity and impaired quality of life... I'll never forget my first year biology lecturer telling our whole lecture theatre full of students - "if you're good, you'll have two children and no more" (because of the environmental consequences of overpopulation).
I have the feeling that we are so far from sustainable and safe systems to support human life and as population continues to increase, the planet is being irreplaceably destroyed - the time to act is now.
I was really drawn to your writing on covid, where you made the point well that health issues and economic issues are intertwined. My sense is that the same is true for economic and environmental issues, but perhaps on a longer timescale...
What is the vision for the planet? Do species other than humans have any right to exist and persist? And even from an anthropocentric view, what kind of life do humans live without access to wilderness - Some kind of Bladerunner 2049 world...
I also hope you will cover the feminist consequences - the unequal burden that child-raising places on women.
Thanks for your comments. These are some of the reasons why I have not published that article yet. I feel like I need to sit down for a full month to analyze everything and write a fair article. Each time somebody like you makes a comment like this, I enlarge its scope. Which is great! You're right, this is an awfully hard topic that intertwines the topics you mention, plus another one: philosophy.
And thx for adding the feminist consequences. It reminds me of the debate around artificial wombs on Twitter...
While this may all be true, I am currently reading a book that points out that environmental factors are affecting fertility as well. The book is called "Count down : how our modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, and imperiling the future of the human race."
I wish you would use 'data' in its proper plural sense, 'the data are...' singular being 'datum'. I know, it's a losing battle, though not yet for the OED. Another losing fight is 'less' when 'fewer' is meant. Every time I hear, 'There are less people', I cringe.
You may also want to check out the role that phthalates have on male and female fertility. There is a direct correlation with the introduction of plastics in the 60’s and male sperm count in the Western Hemisphere as well as interruption of ovarian function.
A note on language you might want to consider being more accurate about: Fertility RATE = # of children born to each woman whereas fertility = capability to reproduce. I think most of the time you either mean fertility rate OR reproduction = production of offspring, not that biologically women are less physically able to reproduce. "Fertility rate drop" does not equal "fertility drop," a different metric that would not be measured by number of people.
That makes sense, thx!
Very interesting piece. Near the beginning did you mean to say that fertility has decreased because the cost:benefit ratio has INCREASED (rather than decreased) since cost has increased and benefit decreased? The common link between New England (really the American colonies) and France is the Enightenment. The founders were heavily influenced by French Enlightenment thinkers of the early 18th century. I think the suggestion that secularization decreased fertility is reasonable, but it seems likely that decreased child mortality and urbanization also contributed. Something as complex as fertiltilty is not likely to have a single causal explanation. As a biologist I see benefits to a decrease in the global population of humans in terms of less habitat destruction, pollution, release of greenhouse chemicals, and loss of biodiversity. But as the father of two kids I understand the societal disruption that decreased population will cause. If the US wants to reverse the trend, it could take actions to make it less expensive to raise kids, like universal child tax credit, quality pre-K, pre and post-natal health care, affordable preventive heath care, and free/subsidized post high school education or vocational training. The US makes it costly and difficult to raise kids if you're not wealthy, and the lack of universal access to good health care pre and post natal gives the US the highest child mortality rate of any developed country. Not conducive to increased fertility.
Thx!
One of the future articles will address the economic measures for fertility. The short: we should do some, but it can’t be all.
You’re right on the cost-benefit.
Child mortality and urbanization did NOT contribute, as these were happening all over Western Europe and yet only France was going through the fertility transition. I think the article addresses that. Maybe not clearly enough?
I will address the cost-benefit of a growing population in a future article.
This section left me a bit confused:
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First, kids were less economically useful:
As standards of living improved and people moved from the farm to the city, the economic value of kids dropped because they were not productive free farm workers anymore.
As sanitation improved, fewer children died, so parents didn’t need to overshoot by having more kids to make sure they had enough support during their retirement.
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When fewer children die more of them make it to the teen years. So having fewer kids gets the same net help from teenagers. This means each young child has a higher value - at least in the agrarian setting - and you need fewer of them.
However, since it might be ten years before the community was confident of the improved mortality it could be a decade or two before the fertility dropped.
These are separate factors.
Economics: the more valuable a kid (economically), the more kids you’ll have.
Healthcare: High mortality means overshooting, independently from economics. You want 2 surviving kids and child mortality is 30%? You might have 3. But if child mortality is 1%, you might only have 2.
Thank you. I enjoy your writings.
I am a biologist as well, and I think that the connection between a decrease in human population and benefits for the environment is overstated. It implies an assumption that each one of us have the same "carbon footprint" and the same decision power. The move to the urban areas, which are environmentally more efficient, is still increasing. I don't think that habitat destruction is driven by overpopulation, not even indirectly.
People don’t understand well how right you are
Thanks!
It's not just about carbon footprint - also air, groundwater, land and ocean pollution, pesticide use, wastes and landfill, limited natural resources, un-sustainable consumption systems. Most of the footprint of supply chains of cities occurs outside the cities themselves.
Thanks, I am aware of all that. I used "carbon footprint" as a catchall for negative impacts on the environment. Again, who decides? Or rather, who choses again and again to disregard externalities?
I am no population expert, but all along while reading your piece, I kept thinking about Quebec and its "Quiet Revolution" or "Revolution tranquille." Quebec's government during the 1950s was dominated by Church and religious beliefs. This period, which Liberals baptized as "La grande noirceur" (The Great Obscurity), ended shortly after the death of prime minister Maurice Duplessis, and with the arrival to power of liberal Jean Lesage. Secularization, modernization and a sense of nationalism accompanied Lesage's government, and the birth rate started to plummet until becoming the lowest of Canada in the late 80s and early 90s. to the point that the provincial government was paying women up to 8,000 CAN $ for a third baby. It remains very low, but it seems to be slowly increasing. However, when comparing Quebec's birth rates with those of the US and Canada, they look pretty similar, so the drop in births in the 60s is a worldwide trend, most probably possible due to the arrival of female contraceptives. But still you might want to take a look at Quebec's case.
Sorry for posting a link to Wikipedia, but this is usually the fastest was to get acquainted with a subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution
Also see: https://www.prb.org/resources/quebecs-alternative-to-pronatalism/
Currently, both Quebec and Canada know that they have to supplement their paltry birth rates with a permanent influx of immigrants.
Lyman Stone talked about it. I will publish that in coming weeks. But these links are valuable. Thanks!
This was interesting to read. If a large part of the data that you used is from Nantucket then two variables come to mind that could affect your conclusions 1) The predominance of the Quaker faith on the island. I don't know if this supports or refutes your thesis but it should be considered https://nha.org/research/nantucket-history/history-topics/when-did-nantucketers-become-quakers/ 2) the Whaling industry which caused men to be away for years at a time
I read a paper on the topic that suggested these were not the cause, but indeed I’m missing more exhaustive data on New England.
Nantucket, Massachusetts is an island in the Atlantic Ocean about 30 miles south of Cape Cod.
some links and information:
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https://newengland.com/weekends-with-yankee-episodes/episode-310-adventure-in-new-england/the-rise-and-fall-of-nantucket-whaling/
1760: By the end of the 1750s, Nantucket’s right whale population was badly depleted, and more and more whalers turned their attention to sperm whales, which were much faster, more aggressive, and required much longer trips to hunt. Larger boats were needed for the task. Because it was no longer realistic to tow each whale back to shore, ships also had to be large enough to allow blubber to be rendered and processed at sea.
1770s: As war was festering back home, Nantucket whaling vessels worked an ever-expanding territory that reached from the southern Falkland Islands north to the Arctic Circle, and along the North American, South American, and African coasts. Nantucket remained neutral during the American Revolution, in part because it had developed such a lucrative trading partnership with England. The island was routinely exempted from the restrictive trade laws of the period, such as the Massachusetts Bay Restraining Bill of 1774, which prohibited trade out of Boston and banned East Coast fisheries. Because Nantucket was considered by some to be too friendly with the English, some East Coast communities banned trade with the island.
interpreting the switch from 'right whales' to larger whales in the 1750s:
Bigger whales meant Larger boats with rendering the whale at sea rather than towing the 'right' whales and rendering on the beaches. The role of and need for children shifted - too small for sea duty and no help needed cutting up the whales on the beaches
Also with dad away sea for a longer time there would be fewer opportunities for the fertility events.
another link on Nantucket
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket
In the beginning of the 17th century, whaling on Nantucket was usually done from small boats launched from the island's shores, which would tow killed wales to be processed on the beach. These boats were only about seven meters long, with mostly Wampanoag manpower, sourced from a system of debt servitude established by English Nantucketers – a typical boat's crew had five Wampanoag oarsmen and a single white Nantucketer at the steering oar. Author Nathaniel Philbrick notes that "without the native population, which outnumbered the white population well into the 1720s, the island would never have become a successful whaling port".[16]
Nantucket's dependence on trade with Britain, derived from its whaling and supporting industries, influenced its leading citizens to remain neutral during the American Revolutionary War, favoring neither the British nor the Patriots.[23]
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In the same Wikipedia entry the population in 1790 (first US census) was 4,555. Not clear if that includes natives/indigenous
Thx! I had read some on these, and the relationship with fertility. You can follow the link in the sources on the 4th chart if the article.
I’m late in joining the party, but that’s what an overflowing inbox does….
I hesitate on the parallel you propose between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. For me, the French revolution was about the desperately poor masses rising against an autocrat and the associated upper class. The American Revolution, resulting in the Declaration of Independence, was about the latter, Independence, in this case the independence of the then “American” upper class from what was indeed a physically distant king. If the members of this American upper class had been living in England, would they have kicked the king out? Or would they have been equally happy enjoying their wealth and social status as the French upper class? The poor masses in France saw the king and the upper class removed, but that in no way meant a dramatic improvement to their living conditions. The masses in America were ruled by the same upper class pre- and post-revolution, the new-found independence was benefiting the upper class, not the masses.
Hey! A frequent reader here. I like this topic but it seems to me that it is blind to gender inequalities. I can agree that fertility is heavily influenced by culture, but the culture that encouraged high fertility rates was based on women explotation. Perhaps it would be useful to explain in what ways you would convince others. You may want to explore the work of feminist economists on demography and care burden, especially Nancy Folbre
Thanks! What’s your favorite intro post on these works?
Well, there is a great introductory lecture on feminist economocs by Jayati Ghosh in YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okH4spiccz4 (be patient, she adresses the fall in child biths at the end). If you are aiming for bibliography reccs just let me know :)
And as feminism has spread, women are more unhappy and suffer higher rates of mental illness.
Hi Tomas,
I have been eagerly waiting for your articles on fertility so I am delighted to see them start.
What if fertility isn’t linked either to industrialisation/GDP per capita/religion but to education and access of health care ? Hans Rosling makes a pretty convincing argument about this both through his TED talk as well as the chapters in Factfulness.
I come from India, where it has been a common prejudice to say that Muslims (15% of population ) are going to take over with their high reproduction rate. It has been proven again and again that its not to do with religion but with education and health care access - especially of women.
I am surprised to see you build your entire case based on 1 country and 2 cities in England. What about taking examples of countries in the Middle East where religion is closely intertwined with governance ? I find your case weak because of this narrow sample. Am frankly surprised. You also included a graph with a sensational headline of “world population is shrinking” while the data only shows the population is expected to flatline in later part of the century. Rosling explains this trend of flatlining quite well. Flatlining is not shrinking, is it ?
Coming back to India. A country of 1.4 billion with 85% Hindu population. I dont think religion has played a deciding factor in fertility. My grandmother had 11 kids, 2 died. She was un-educated and driven by a KPI of producing boys (7 girls, 2 boys). To my knowledge, Hinduism isn’t obsessed about encouraging reproduction like the proselytising religions.
My mother had two - she was a working woman with complete access to modern health care and a full-time job with expectation to handle both home and work. This was also the time where govt successfully ran a national campaign to promote family planning -“ Us Two, Ours Two”. It was done subtly (unlike China). It became so ingrained in our sub-conscious as a society that we started looking down upon couples who would have more than 2 kids - the only “valid” excuse being if first two were girls. 2 was the gold standard for my parents generation. 1 child was considered lonely and unhealthy. More than 2 was considered “uneducated”. It wasn’t religion or lack of it that influenced my mother’s choice. It was the cultural narrative created by the govt. and practical pressures of balancing a job and family
I have two boys. But most of my friends (especially those in workforce) have chosen to have 1 kid. India doesn’t yet have an organised support system for raising young children. Joint families have broken down but the replacement infrastructure (quality crèches/day care) aren’t yet in place. Even with a progressive maternity leave (6 months), its complex for a woman to re-enter the workforce after two long breaks. We have a really low workforce rate for women - around 17%. After the first kid, it simply becomes a “sensible” decision for the modern working Indian woman to make a choice between career and second kid. Religion doesn’t shape our choice. My mother was more religious than me but our fertility rate is the same :) Very recently, India’s fertility dropped to less than 2 - it made news. Religion (or lack of it) has very little to do with it. The hardships of raising kids in urban jungles without the required support infrastructure do.
While I don’t find your logic compelling, I do agree with your overall idea that culture/ideas play a big role in fertility. What if Israel’s high fertility is a case, not of religion but, of a cultural narrative amongst a group of people whose ancestors have suffered great losses and are being encouraged to reproduce to counter that effect ?
At a philosophical level, I think a society where we lose the motivation to procreate is doomed. Am curious how societies are going to successfully re-engineer this motivation.
I look forward to reading more in your series.
Yes, you are spot on.
I am not saying in this article that religion is the only driver of fertility.
I am saying that *ideas* are a *core* part of it.
Economics, healthcare, and social structures are clearly other pieces.
Looks like this is much closer to your expertise than mine (neuroscience, behavioral ecology), so point taken. But since fertility is dropping most rapidly among developed countries which have largest carbon footprint, don't you think there will lower total levels of energy consumption and less carbon and pollutant emission as a consequence? Asking, not asserting here!
Only 4 countries in the world have increased their fertility since the 1950s, and only by 0-4%. The fertility rate is going down in all countries.
Developed countries consume more per capita but are also much more efficient.
The more I study the problem the more I think we’re thinking about the carbon footprint completely wrong.
The world outside developed countries is still increasing usage. But more people also means more brainpower to solve problems.
The point it is not the individuals per capita using a fixed amount of energy, but the whole system of capital accumulation which benefits the top 3-4% (at most) of the whole people. Consider, for example, a million or two million people using the subway everyday are not consuming the energy in total of someone riding a giant truck with lots of oil consumption from state to state just for fun (over simplification, I know). The point, again, is that quite a lot of people can live much more sustainably and the issue to be addressed is the impact at the systems level and the activities with the highest impact may not have any relevancy to, desire from or relation to 80-90% of the people who may be living.
Another example: he carbon footprint of the food wasted at the system level in the richer economies is much more than the footprint of all the food consumed by a majority of the global population -> not necessarily a result of the number of people. Waste can increase even though the number of people served through the same agri-food system keeps going down and down.
Intriguing thing fertility. I am quite new to the subject and would appreciate whatever you might write.
BTW - you hooked me with the hammer/dance series.
I got curious about two facets - Nantucket and modern times.
In this post some views on Nantucket fertility and its relation to commercial activity.
Nantucket was a one-main-industry island in the 1700s - whaling.
They traded with England and were permitted to be neutral during the American Revolution so trading could continue.
Nantucket was considered to be a wealthy community.
Through the 1750s they hunted right whales. Right whales were close to shore and floated after death. They were then towed to the beach. The tribe of Wampanoag were the paddlers on these boats. Who did the rendering is not clear to me but I will guess that children above some age could be useful.
The right whale population declined substantially in the 1750s and Nantucket whaling shifted to Sperm whales. These were far out at sea and the rendering for oil occurred on the ship as the oil could be stored but the whale would decay.
This meant larger ships and long trips. Apparently a trip could take a year or more and a trip could cover all the way to the South Atlantic ocean. Not only were men gone a long time but sometimes the ship was lost at sea.
In 1763 some disease killed most of the Wampanoag on Nantucket. (Wikipedia)
Net: In the 1750-1800 period there were big changes and young men doing whaling were away from the island for a long time. Women and older men ran the trading.
Perhaps these items put downward pressure on fertility.
Some readings:
The Whaling Industry and Fertility Decline: Nantucket, Massachusetts 1660-1850
Barbara J. Logue
Social Science History
Vol. 7, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 427-456 (30 pages)
Published by: Cambridge University Press
The Case for Birth Control before 1850: Nantucket Reexamined
Barbara J. Logue
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter, 1985), pp. 371-391 (21 pages)
Thanks for sharing!
If you're interested in the interaction of Nantucket and fertility, this is the paper for you:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/203834?seq=6#metadata_info_tab_contents
Thanks for your work on articles like this! Always quality research synthesized into a digestible story!
One thought I had: if secularization decreases fertility, does evangelization increase it? If so, you'd expect increase as Catholicism spread through Europe and in Latin America during Spanish colonization.
I have no idea! But it does sound like a fascinating question.
It all depends on the baseline fertility of natives.
One argument that Lyman Stone makes is that many civilizations in the past turned to having fewer kids, but they’re not here to tell us. So as a rule of thumb, most surviving societies should have had plenty of kids to counter child mortality (less they would go extinct).
Secularization was special because it came along with the scientific revolution, which increased incomes and sanitation, making societies with few kids viable where others would have gone extinct.
All of this to say that native Americans probably had plenty of kids and the Catholic Church might not have increased their fertility. But that’s just a guess
Hi Tomas, just to make sure your sources are complete.
I found the following book a super insightful read on population trends and why fertility changes: Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson: Empty Planet: The shock of global population decline. The authors, researchers from Canada make the case that the one factor at play is the education of the mother / women and both work out the correlation and why that matters.
They also show that most of the population trend charts and predictions we're confronted with from the likes of UN are not very competent because the underlying math is way too simple. It's a lot to read but could provide a lot of pointers to other sources.
Eventually the authors present a refined model to predict trends by putting nations into 5 categories and show how countries go through them.
I found this very well researched and explained. Hope that it helps you and others. To my surprise this book is not very well known or discussed.
Nice, thx!
It's a really interesting topic. As the saying goes - demography is destiny.
I'm looking to see where you go with population decline being a catastrophe. I hope you will really interrogate the environmental consequences of ever-increasing population growth. I know you're aware of the issue of ocean plastics. There is also groundwater and soil contamination, habitat destruction and species collapse, climate change, radioactive waste that is mutagenic for millions of years, overflowing landfills... We are basically living in a soup of carcinogenic chemicals (the Story of Stuff is a good summary - https://www.storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/) which is causing lasting damage to the DNA of humanity and impaired quality of life... I'll never forget my first year biology lecturer telling our whole lecture theatre full of students - "if you're good, you'll have two children and no more" (because of the environmental consequences of overpopulation).
I have the feeling that we are so far from sustainable and safe systems to support human life and as population continues to increase, the planet is being irreplaceably destroyed - the time to act is now.
I was really drawn to your writing on covid, where you made the point well that health issues and economic issues are intertwined. My sense is that the same is true for economic and environmental issues, but perhaps on a longer timescale...
What is the vision for the planet? Do species other than humans have any right to exist and persist? And even from an anthropocentric view, what kind of life do humans live without access to wilderness - Some kind of Bladerunner 2049 world...
I also hope you will cover the feminist consequences - the unequal burden that child-raising places on women.
Thanks for your comments. These are some of the reasons why I have not published that article yet. I feel like I need to sit down for a full month to analyze everything and write a fair article. Each time somebody like you makes a comment like this, I enlarge its scope. Which is great! You're right, this is an awfully hard topic that intertwines the topics you mention, plus another one: philosophy.
And thx for adding the feminist consequences. It reminds me of the debate around artificial wombs on Twitter...
While this may all be true, I am currently reading a book that points out that environmental factors are affecting fertility as well. The book is called "Count down : how our modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, and imperiling the future of the human race."
Added to the list. Thx!
Seems to me that you are severely limiting your inference space. See “The Dawn of Everything” by Graeber and Wengrow.
I’m with Debt: the first 5k years right now
I wish you would use 'data' in its proper plural sense, 'the data are...' singular being 'datum'. I know, it's a losing battle, though not yet for the OED. Another losing fight is 'less' when 'fewer' is meant. Every time I hear, 'There are less people', I cringe.
Thx for the feedback! I’ll try to incorporate it
You may also want to check out the role that phthalates have on male and female fertility. There is a direct correlation with the introduction of plastics in the 60’s and male sperm count in the Western Hemisphere as well as interruption of ovarian function.