Fertility Rates: Are We Running Out of Babies??

Summary

Science Vs – "Fertility Rates: Are We Running Out of Babies??"

Host: Blythe Terrell (filling in for Wendy Zuckerman)
Producer/Contributor: Rose Rimler
Date: October 16, 2025
Podcast Publisher: Spotify Studios

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Episode Overview

This episode of Science Vs investigates the global decline in fertility rates — are we really running out of babies, and should we be worried? Politicians and pundits are calling for a reversal of the “baby bust” with dramatic proposals, while others suggest it could be positive for the planet. The team dives into the science to find out what's actually happening with fertility rates worldwide, why they're dropping, what the social implications are, and what (if anything) governments can do to encourage more births.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fertility Panic: Where Did It Come From?

• Politicians, including former President Trump and VP J.D. Vance, are championing policies to increase the birthrate (00:29–01:20).
• Pronatalist movements, offering proposals from cash bonuses to "national medals of motherhood," are gaining traction (01:35).
• Blythe frames the central questions: Is declining fertility a problem for society? What does the science say? (02:35).

2. Falling Fertility Rates: How Widespread?

• The trend of declining birth rates is global, not just in the US or Europe (04:51–05:15).

  “The downward trend for birth rates… is happening almost everywhere and has been for decades.” – Blythe (05:15)

• U.S. fertility at an all-time low (1.62), with global fertility slightly above replacement but dropping (05:15–07:02).
  • Replacement rate = 2.1 births/woman.
  • Peak population projected in 60 years, then decline.

3. Does a Shrinking Population Solve Other Problems?

• Lower population won’t be fast or dramatic enough to fix climate change issues (07:40–08:27).

  “It’s not gonna fix climate. Scientists argue to have fewer people to have lower birth rates.” – Blythe (08:27)

4. Case Study: South Korea’s Record Low Fertility

• South Korea currently has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.75 (08:53–09:02).
• Social and economic transformation: “Gold Miss” phenomenon (10:28–11:01) — highly educated women opting out of marriage and children.

  “We just never lived in a society with a 0.75 fertility rate.” – Dr. Jisoo Hwang, Seoul National University (09:16)

• Cultural lag: Fast rise of women in education and work, but home/gender norms haven’t caught up (12:00–12:50).

  “All the institutions around us are not designed to operate with both mom and dad working full time.” – Dr. Hwang (12:50)

5. Consequences of Ultra-Low Fertility

• A "kid desert": closing schools, lack of peers, social infrastructure fading (16:26–17:28).
• Aging population strains pension, healthcare, and the social safety net (18:03–19:28).

  “In the extreme scenario where we don’t do anything, then those kind of systems will collapse.” – Dr. Hwang (19:14)

• South Korea: “Super-aged society,” widespread elderly poverty, high suicide rates (20:05).

6. The Search for Solutions: What Actually Works?

a. "Influencer Pronatalism" – The Georgia Case Study

• In Georgia, the Orthodox Church's Patriarch Ilia II personally baptizes all third children or higher in a family (24:52–27:11).
• Results: 40,000 additional births, fertility rate rose from 1.76 to 2.3 in two years (28:23–28:30).

  “Within a space of 24 months, we actually see it rise to 2.3. So that's quite a big jump.” – Dr. Neha Diopa (28:23)

• But the effect faded over time; success required a uniquely trusted leader (29:57–30:47).

b. Systemic Policies to Support Families

• Childcare: Expanding affordable childcare increases first births (31:29–32:18).

  “If you increase childcare slots for young kids by just 1 percentage point, the odds of somebody having their first baby goes up more than 10%.” – Blythe (32:18)

• Parental Leave: Longer paid leave supports higher birth rates (32:18–32:30).

  “In Austria, they increased parental leave from one year to two years and saw about 12 additional kids per 100 women.” – Blythe (32:29)

• Cash Bonuses (“cash for kids”): May encourage earlier births, but no long-term dramatic impact (33:44–34:48).
• IVF Access: Helps older women conceive, but doesn’t substantially raise overall birth rates (34:48).

c. Other Incentives & Concerns

• Menstrual education classes: Limited rationale, possibly addressing a minor gap (34:55–35:32).
• Medals/Recognition: No historic evidence of effectiveness, sometimes linked to problematic nationalistic or coercive motives (35:40–36:58).

  “Historically, this idea of pronatalism… is also very tied up with white supremacy… Christian nationalism. And… policies that end up being coercive.” – Blythe (36:58)

d. Immigration as a Buffer

• Increased immigration can help stabilize population and workforce; U.S. population would decline rapidly without it (37:36–38:03).

7. How "Crisis" Is This? What Do the Experts Say?

• Most experts do not see imminent “crisis” at US rates (>1.5).

  “Nobody that I talked to thought that humanity was in danger of going extinct anytime soon.” – Blythe (40:06)

• The real issue is people not having as many children as they want, due to external barriers — not a lack of desire (40:54).

  “The real crisis is actually people can’t have the kids they want.” – Blythe (40:54)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The downward trend for birth rates... is happening almost everywhere and has been for decades."
  – Blythe Terrell (05:15)

• "It's a crazy number... it's difficult to imagine because we just never lived in a society with a 0.75 fertility rate."
  – Dr. Jisoo Hwang (09:16)

• "We are all given 24 hours a day. Something needs to give."
  – Dr. Jisoo Hwang (14:57)

• "If you increase childcare slots for young kids by just 1 percentage point, the odds of somebody having their first baby goes up more than 10%."
  – Blythe Terrell (32:18)

• "Within a space of 24 months, we actually see [the fertility rate in Georgia] rise to 2.3. So that's quite a big jump."
  – Dr. Neha Diopa (28:23)

• "The real crisis is actually people can’t have the kids they want. And I was like, well, then this is not a crisis of desire."
  – Blythe Terrell (40:54)

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Major Timestamps

• 00:00–02:35: Introduction of the fertility panic; recent political attention.
• 04:50–07:30: How birth rate decline is global; defining replacement rate and trends.
• 08:53–15:46: South Korea as a case study; social change, gender norms, and “Gold Miss” phenomenon.
• 16:22–20:14: Consequences: school closures, aging population, and social infrastructure challenges.
• 23:17–33:32: Policies to raise fertility: influencer effect (Georgia), childcare, parental leave, cash bonuses.
• 34:48–38:03: Other interventions: IVF, menstrual education, medals, immigration.
• 38:40–41:47: Should we be worried? Expert views, limits of current policies, and Blythe’s conclusions.

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Episode Summary: Insights for Non-Listeners

• Declining fertility rates are real and widespread, but the scale and causes differ across countries.
• Fears of extinction or total social collapse are overblown at present fertility levels, especially in the U.S.
• South Korea demonstrates the rapid consequences of ultra-low fertility: childless schools, aging society, and stressed welfare.
• Major contributors to lower fertility: changing female education and economic participation, without matching support for work-life balance.
• Influencer and cultural interventions (e.g., Georgia’s mass baptisms) can have dramatic, if short-lived, results — but are generally not replicable.
• Evidence shows that policies like paid parental leave and affordable childcare nudge fertility upward, but aren't silver bullets.
• Cash payments and IVF access aren’t game-changers at the population level, though they can help certain groups.
• Immigration is a significant buffer for maintaining national populations, though it’s not a global solution as overall rates fall.
• Experts advocate focusing on helping people have the children they want, rather than panicking about a lack of desire for kids.

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Closing Tone

The discussion is lively, thoughtful, and nuanced, marked by humor (“I am not volunteering to get impregnated by Elon Musk,” (23:32)), but careful not to trivialize complex demographic shifts. The hosts balance optimism — that policies and societal adjustments can help — with realism about what is and isn’t likely to work. Ultimately, the fertility problem isn’t about running out of babies, but about removing social and economic roadblocks that stop people from having the kids they already want.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Blythe Terrell]

Hi, I'm Blythe Terrell, filling in for Wendy Zuckerman. And you are listening to Science Versus. This is the show that pits facts against falling fertility. Today we're talking about the claim that people are having fewer and fewer babies and that it could be bad news for humanity. We've actually been hearing about this fear for years, but recently it has made its way to the White House.

[Podcast Advertiser]

President Donald Trump is pushing for a baby boom.

[Donald Trump / J.D. Vance]

We want more babies. To put it very nicely, I'll be known as the fertilization president, and that's okay. That's not bad. I've been called much worse.

[Blythe Terrell]

Vice President J.D. vance has gone in on this, too.

[Donald Trump / J.D. Vance]

So let me say very simply, I.

[Blythe Terrell]

Want more babies in the United States of America. And it's not just the U.S. this idea that people need to have more babies has been popping up all over the world with headlines about low birth rates in parts of Europe.

[Donald Trump / J.D. Vance]

Italy is suffering through one of the worst demographic crises anywhere in the world. Spain's population is disappearing.

[Blythe Terrell]

Plus Japan and South Korea.

[Donald Trump / J.D. Vance]

The Korean population crisis has reached a new milestone. The nation's population could free fall by 85% over the next century.

[Blythe Terrell]

China, which famously had a policy limiting couples to one child only, has done a 180 for the first time.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Beijing has announced a nationwide child care subsidy in a bid to boost the country's birth rate.

[Blythe Terrell]

Meanwhile, in the US there's actually a whole movement building around this of people called pronatalists, and they seem to have the ear of President Trump. Some of the proposals we're hearing about to get more babies include stuff like $5,000 cash bonuses for parents, classes to teach women about their menstrual cycles, and even a grand prize for the most fertile among us, a national medal of motherhood for women with six or more children. So there's a few reasons that people are eager to this around. Like, we hear that a baby bust will totally mess up society and potentially tank the economy. And we also hear that it's actually an existential problem, that we might even be on our way to extinction as a species. So today we are asking, is that right? How worried should we be about this? And if you want to boost fertility rates, how do you do it? Because when it comes to fertility, there's.

[Donald Trump / J.D. Vance]

A lot of we want more babies, to put it very nicely.

[Blythe Terrell]

But then there's science coming up after the break.

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[Blythe Terrell]

All right, welcome back. This is Blythe Turrell. I am the editor at Science Versus. I'm here with senior producer Rose Rimler. Hey, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Hi, Blythe.

[Blythe Terrell]

Welcome, welcome.

[Rose Rimler]

Thanks. Actually, you told me I had to be here, so. No, but it's a very interesting topic. Although I've noticed, Blythe, that you in particular, you seem like particularly obsessed with it. So why, why does this like grab you so much?

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, so I think what it is is that there's like this motley crew of this like band of misfits, right, that are all interesting.

[Rose Rimler]

Raising the alarm.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, yeah. Not that they're misfits, but I mean you have these sort of pronatalists and you have like some like very techy people. You've got your Elon Musks and other tech bros. You have like that group of it. You've sort of got. You have like, you're sort of fun. You're sort of right wing Christians on the same boat sometimes, like, hey, we really gotta like populate, populate the earth, you know, and it's just this interesting group together and I just wanted to know, like, okay, so are they right? Like, is there something going on here?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, I'd like to know that too.

[Blythe Terrell]

All right, so to start off here, just like right out of the gate, one thing that the pronatalists are right about is that in lots of places birth rates are going down. Like, yes, people are having fewer kids on average. And that is true in basically every country in the world.

[Rose Rimler]

Really?

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh, wow.

[Blythe Terrell]

I've shocked you already.

[Rose Rimler]

I thought it was just like, I thought you were just going to say the US and some parts of Europe and.

[Blythe Terrell]

No, the trend, the downward trend for birth rates for what's called for something called specifically total fertility rate. Is happening almost everywhere and has been for decades. Huh. Okay. So if you take the U.S. the total fertility rate, which is basically like a snapshot of the kind of average number of kids one woman will have in her lifetime, is a shorthand for it. That average is right now 1.62 births per woman. Okay. And that's actually the lowest it's ever been. So the concern is that if you want the population to stay where it is, if you want it not to fall, the total fertility rate needs to be 2.1 kids per woman.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay. And that's 2.1. Because some of these pregnancies, the person who's born will. Will die, won't have their own children. It's kind of like a. The little bit of an insurance policy, I guess.

[Blythe Terrell]

Exactly. And just to say, like, this is talked about in terms of births per woman, but it's really per couple per set of parents, because you're using that 2.1 births to replace those two people, whoever they may be. Right, right. And it's just like, it's easier to track what comes out of a uterus than what comes out of a fetus is.

[Jisoo Hwang]

Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

I'm not sure I want to know where your mind went, but I can see. I can see you thinking about.

[Rose Rimler]

Let'S move on.

[Blythe Terrell]

Let's move on. So the idea is for the population to be stable, to not go up or down, the total fertility rate needs to be 2.1.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

And according to the United nations, in 2024, the global total fertility rate was 2.2.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh.

[Blythe Terrell]

So in the U.S. it's 1.62. As of right now, it's 2.2 worldwide. So it's above that replacement level.

[Rose Rimler]

So if you're looking at the population of Earth, the human population of Earth.

[Blythe Terrell]

We'Re good at this moment, but pretty consistently, it's going down. And so people are like, oh. Even though at a global level, it's above this 2.1 replacement level right now, people are like, oh, well, it's probably going to go down if that's what it's been doing for decades. And so scientists do estimate that global population will peak in maybe, like, 60 years and then start to fall. Like, that is what current estimates do show.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, but is that a bad thing? Because you used to hear a lot about people worrying about overpopulation. So is that good news?

[Blythe Terrell]

You know, that's a great question because, like, actually even just talking about this out in the world, as you know, I am, whenever I bring this up to people, they're like, oh, population might be going down. Like, isn't that good? Good for the environment? You fear people using up resources, spewing out trash, greenhouse gases, like all the crap that humans are currently doing. But a lot of scientists are like, actually, it's a little more complicated than that. They don't really think that this is going to be a climate solution. And that's basically because the population isn't expected to actually drop soon enough to really reverse our climate problems to actually have as big of an impact as it would need to have to save our asses.

[Rose Rimler]

Basically saying the stuff we need to do to reduce emissions has to be done before we'd start to actually use fewer resources.

[Blythe Terrell]

That is exactly what people say.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, that does make sense.

[Blythe Terrell]

So it's not gonna fix climate. Scientists argue to have fewer people to have lower birth rates. And this also means that we are pretty far from the population dropping in this super extreme way.

[Rose Rimler]

Right.

[Blythe Terrell]

Like this idea that humans might go extinct.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay. But there definitely is some nutty stuff that can start happening when your birth rates go really low. So let's talk about that. And I want to do that, Rose, by taking you to South Korea.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

Because South Korea is the country with the lowest total fertility rate in the world.

[Rose Rimler]

What is it?

[Blythe Terrell]

It is 0.75.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh, wow, that's. Now that you told me what to. I understand that that's really low now.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, yeah. So that is the 2024 number. And actually, I talked to this economist about it.

[Jisoo Hwang]

It's a crazy number. It's a number that. I think people. I mean, all Koreans know the number now because they saw it in the news so much, but it's still a number that it's difficult to imagine because we just never lived in a society with a 0.75 fertility rate.

[Blythe Terrell]

That is Jisoo Hwang. She is a professor studying economics at Seoul National University in South Korea. So basically, a 0.75 birth rate means that if nothing else happens, your next generation, in terms of people born, is gonna be less than half the size of your current generation. Mm.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Mm.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. So, like, every couple is producing less than one kid.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Mm.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. And so I wanted to talk to Jisoo because she did a whole bunch of work to figure out, like, how South Korea got here, what's going on, and there was a few things that contributed to this, but I'm gonna zoom in on one of the biggies. Okay. So for Jisoo, her spidey sense on this started tingling about 10 years ago when she was a grad student and she noticed something kind of surprising going on.

[Jisoo Hwang]

More and more of the highly educated women were not getting married. And now that I think about it, that was like the precursor to all of this happening.

[Blythe Terrell]

So Jisoo noticed this with her friends. Actually, she told me she was like, oh, a lot of them have gone to college, maybe gotten good jobs, but they were staying single. And in Korea, there was actually a name for a woman like this. She was called a Gold Miss.

[Jisoo Hwang]

So the term Gold Miss, I'm not the one who coined it. It was becoming a popular word in Korea to refer to women who are highly educated. So they're gold. They're highly educated and they can have, they have high potential earnings. They already have high paying jobs. But there are Miss. So they didn't get married.

[Rose Rimler]

That's actually a very neutral, not like somewhat flattering term. So much better than like old maid or whatever.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, right. So Jis, when she started digging into this, she realized that a lot of this trend of women not getting married, really low fertility, it seemed to be related to this massive change that had happened in South Korea's economy. Okay. So if you look back like 50 plus years ago, South Korea was a really, really poor country. But then it really shifted. Like the country starts building up its industries, starts exporting a ton of stuff. There's lots of South Korean companies that are super successful global companies.

[Rose Rimler]

K Pop.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yes. Yeah. K Pop is a part of this. Definitely a part of this. So all of this economic growth, all of this change, it also meant that like way more women started getting educated and getting jobs, in some cases really demanding jobs, really long hours. So there was this like big shift in women's roles in the workforce, the workplace.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

But Jisoo told me that as this education and workplace shift was happening, what they did not see was a huge shift in women's roles at home.

[Jisoo Hwang]

And that's because you know our norms about, you know what it means to be a good mother or a good wife or a good worker. You know, these kind of social norms, they can't change that quickly.

[Rose Rimler]

So you mean you, you go to college, you get a higher education, you become a dentist or a lawyer or whatever, but then you still gotta go home and like do all the cooking and cleaning and childcaring. That's the expectation.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. And obviously like painting with a really broad brush. Right? But yes. So yes, Jisoo told me in Korea, women are still largely supposed to do the childcare, largely supposed to do most of the work around the house. And she said that it is bigger than, like, any one couple's attitude about this.

[Jisoo Hwang]

So it's not like someone's fault. It's not like. So even if your husband is, for example, very supportive and he has very, you know, egalitarian gender attitudes, it may still not work. Because, like, the whole society, all the institutions around us are not designed to, you know, operate with both mom and dad working full time. So, for example, in Korea, elementary school, first grade, second grade, they come home at 1pm so someone has to be.

[Rose Rimler]

Home for the kid.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yes.

[Rose Rimler]

There's like these barriers to having a kid.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. If both parents are working, there's these huge barriers to having a kid, which.

[Rose Rimler]

Is true here as well.

[Blythe Terrell]

Mm. Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

I mean, we're talking about Korea because it has a distinct issue, but it's some of these issues. So far, the issues you're bringing up seem fairly broad. Like, these also seem like issues here in the U.S. they are.

[Blythe Terrell]

They are.

[Rose Rimler]

And yet we're at 1.6.

[Blythe Terrell]

And we're at 1.6.

[Rose Rimler]

We're smoking their asses. So explain that.

[Blythe Terrell]

Actually, I can. The argument is that the speed mattered. Like, for example, Jisoo told me over there, women's education levels ramped up, like, extremely fast.

[Jisoo Hwang]

So from a country where almost no women were college graduates, now more than half of the women are college graduates.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Hmm.

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay. They see that this change happened really fast. And in the US it happened, but it just happened slower because the US has been like, stronger economically for longer.

[Rose Rimler]

There's been more time for adjustments to be made.

[Jisoo Hwang]

Right.

[Rose Rimler]

A little easier.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, yeah. And there's other stuff that could be at play here too, like cultural differences, things like that.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

But to zoom out, though, I will say, you know, in a lot of countries, as women get more education, better paying jobs, our time becomes more expensive. Expensive. That was one thing that Jisoo kept pointing out. She's like, your time, if you can get a job that pays you more money, it's a big. The cost benefit changes for having a kid, especially if you're gonna be the one who's expected to stay home. Especially if you don't have reliable childcare. Like all these things. Right. And all of this, like, changes the calculus of having a kid.

[Jisoo Hwang]

We are all given 24 hours a day. Something needs to give. So some women are choosing, you know, what then? You know, I don't think I can, you know, take this package of marriage and childcare. I'll just forego having children. I'll forego Getting married.

[Blythe Terrell]

So it's not necessarily just that people are like, my job is way more fun than hanging out with a kid all day.

[Jisoo Hwang]

No, no, no, no, no. It's not. Not about that. Right.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. It's more about a calculation of what I can make happen in my life.

[Blythe Terrell]

And feel good about doing so. A bigger picture. Like, even though there's other reasons people aren't having as many kids, some economists do argue that this gender shift in education and jobs and just overall more autonomy for women, it could be the biggest reason that we've seen this change worldwide.

[Rose Rimler]

Women becoming more educated and more likely to work.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so that's a little bit about the why, like the how we got here. And now I want to stay in South Korea to talk about what can happen next. So, you know, using South Korea as like sort of a worst case scenario. What does it look like when your fertility rate goes so low? And I want to start with kids because when you have fewer births, you have fewer kids. And there's a ton of headlines about this actually, like South Korea becoming basically like a kid desert. Have you seen these?

[Rose Rimler]

No, but I. That was my first thought. It was like, sounds a little sad.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. And there's tons of reports around this. You know, this is happening. The population of kids is shrinking in ways that are like. That is actually noticeable. I mean, there's reports of hundreds and even thousands of schools just completely having to shut down, you know, tiny numbers of kids in classes. I saw a headline the other day about a primary school that opened with one first grader, Rose. Oh, wow. One first grader. Can you imagine being the only first grader in your class? That's so sad. There's reports of them turning the schools into other things like old folks homes.

[Rose Rimler]

That's telling.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. And Jisoo said that she has noticed this out in the world.

[Jisoo Hwang]

Walking around, you see so much more older people relatively than children.

[Blythe Terrell]

Is it like you're bird watching and you're like, look, it's a one year old.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Right.

[Jisoo Hwang]

Right. It's much more difficult to see a baby just walking around in the streets than seeing older people. Right. Very old people. It's much easier to see very old people than to see babies.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. And the other thing about this is it can build on itself. So if you're thinking, oh, like, maybe I do want to have a kid, and you look around and you're like, ugh, there's no school. Right. There's no pediatrician, there's no other kids on the playground.

[Rose Rimler]

There's no infrastructure in place.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. So that's a thing too. Like, you maybe you hesitate and then the next thing that happens that freaks people out about all this, it relates to the older people, right? Like, we just heard that we have way fewer kids and proportionally we have way more older people in the population. Right.

[Rose Rimler]

And they need someone to take care of them.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yes. Not only do they need someone to take care of them, they also need, like, money to take care of them. Because there's two pieces of this. Right? Like, there's like, there's the idea that you can run into like, caregiver shortages, which we do hear about. But the thing that actually economists seem to be a little more freaked out about is that, like, okay, when you get old, what happens? You're too old to work, you retire, you maybe have a pension, but you also generally have healthcare. And the way we pay for those things is through taxes. I know, taxes. Ooh, bro, I can see you. I can see your eyes glazing over. But it really matters. This tax thing actually is really important because what happens is if you don't have people, younger people in your population, you end up with fewer people in the workforce, you end up with fewer people paying taxes, and then you end up not being able to pay for these programs for your older people. Plus, we use taxes to pay for other stuff, Right? Like roads, parks, fire departments. So all this could get messy. And obviously, like, South Korea is trying to figure this out. They are very aware of this problem, of course, but it could get bad. Here's what Jisoo told me.

[Jisoo Hwang]

You know, in the extreme scenario where we don't do anything, then those kind of systems will collapse, right? Like we won't have a public pension, for example, if we don't do anything. At least the way it is now.

[Rose Rimler]

Well, it makes sense though, because it's like the whole society is structured in such a way that young people support old people. So without the young people, the old people are screwed.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

And that's bad for us future old people.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. So South Korea, actually, scientists call it a super aged society because more than 20% of the people are older than 65 and a lot of them are actually living in poverty. And this isn't just because of the population stuff. Like, there's other reasons too. But South Korea actually has like one of the highest rates of elderly poverty among rich countries. And they have like, really high suicide rates also. Mm.

[Rose Rimler]

Jesus.

[Blythe Terrell]

At least in some cases, according to the research. That's because people are like, I can't, you know, can't afford to live.

[Rose Rimler]

Oy, bae.

[Blythe Terrell]

So this is the fear, bottom, basically, that we, that if things, if trends for fertility keep going the way they're going, other countries, worldwide, we're all going to end up in this boat where like, things kind of start to crumble.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Because society is people. So without people, you don't have society.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's true, you know, it's very. It's so simple when you put it that way, Rose. Society is people. And so this argument, and also, I mean, frankly, like the way we've had society now is like society is all different ages of people doing all kinds of stuff, you know, not just because we're like, you know, we love the sound of children's laughter, but also because we've built a society that requires all these different parts of it to sort of function and to like, also, like, feel good, you know, so it's. Yeah. So like, the concerns are very real, which means the obvious question is, what can we do about it?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

And that's what we're gonna talk about after the break.

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[Blythe Terrell]

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[Blythe Terrell]

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[Blythe Terrell]

Welcome back. It's Blythe. I'm here with Rose Rimbler. Hey, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Hey, Blythe.

[Blythe Terrell]

Today we are talking about the idea that we are in a fertility crisis in the US Globally, because birth rates are going down all over the world. And the question is, what can you do?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, I am not volunteering to get impregnated by Elon Musk, so don't even.

[Blythe Terrell]

Suggest that you're not signing up for the, like, the Musk Express, the Tesla sperm delivery service. It's just a cybertruck shows up in front of your apartment with a refrigerated sample. No, that's not what you want.

[Rose Rimler]

Please offer other solutions that could potentially work.

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay, so where I want to start here, Rose, actually is with this study that I got extremely obsessed with because it involves, like a kind of surprising tactic to get people on the baby making train.

[Rose Rimler]

Free tequila. What is it?

[Blythe Terrell]

What is it? No, Rose, I'm taking you to church. Oh, excuse me. And one of the researchers who was involved in this study, her name is Dr. Neha Diopa.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

I'm an assistant professor at the University of Exeter in the economics department.

[Blythe Terrell]

So what she studied, it all goes down in Georgia in Eastern Europe, back in the mid 2000s. Mid to late 2000s. And where we start is that Georgia has its fertility rate that maybe doesn't sound that bad by today's standards, but it is below replacement. It's about 1.76. Okay. Yeah. Which is, you know, kind of similar to where the US Is right now, Right? Little higher. Here's Neha.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

So Georgia is, let's say, post Soviet, one of the post Soviet countries. And it has a very typical trait of the other post Soviet countries, which is extremely low fertility rates. There was a concern both by the government and the church that the demographic landscape of Georgia looks like is going through a fertility crisis.

[Blythe Terrell]

And another thing going on in Georgia is that it has this very powerful national church, this church I'm talking about called the Georgian Orthodox Church. And as like a cultural institution, it's really Strong. More than 80% of Georgians belong to it. And it also just like has. It's very strongly tied to the national identity. So people are like, into this church. And this church is led by a very powerful dude called Patriarch Ilia ii. He's not like he's not quite pope level, but he's like a big deal in this church.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

So he is a very popular guy. And his opinion, like, he was rated the most trusted man in the country.

[Blythe Terrell]

The most trusted man in the country.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

With a rating of 94%.

[Blythe Terrell]

Would you compare him to like, is he like Elvis?

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

I can't think of anyone who at some point had such high approval ratings.

[Blythe Terrell]

It's so unprecedented how much this guy is beloved.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Exactly.

[Blythe Terrell]

So Patriarch Ilya ii, he sees this fertility thing in Georgia, he thinks these fertility rates are too low and decides he's going to do something about it. So in December 2007, Ilya II announces this new plan saying he would personally.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Baptize any third or higher born child within marriage to Georgian Orthodox women.

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay. So kid number one, kid number two, you're out of luck. Kid number three, you're blessed by the Patriarch of the church.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Yeah. When he made this announcement. So he said that not only will he personally baptize, but he also said he would become their godfather.

[Blythe Terrell]

Oh, yeah. Then he's the godfather of that kid forever, I guess, right?

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Yes, exactly. I'm sure for someone who's just, who is not religious or just from an outside perspective might seem like, oh, it's just going to be a godfather in the name of it. Of course it's not.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, you're doing air quotes, Godfather.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Yeah, exactly. So he's not going to be visiting you on every birthday of your. But it is. It's a matter of honor and respect for a family to have that.

[Blythe Terrell]

So that's the intervention. That's what he decides to do. He's like, okay, we're not having enough kids. I'm gonna baptize kids. Three plus.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. So it's an incentive to have more than two children.

[Blythe Terrell]

Exactly.

[Rose Rimler]

So does this actually convince people to have more children?

[Blythe Terrell]

That's what neha's team wanted to find out. So several years later, they did this huge analysis to see what happened.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

So what we find is that people want to start having kids so they can make use of this program.

[Blythe Terrell]

How many kids is Ilya ii responsible for?

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

40,000 kids is how many he's been. Has mass baptized. Yeah.

[Rose Rimler]

Wow. Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. And according to neha's team's analysis, these were like mostly additional births. Like, they weren't like, it wouldn't have happened. Right. Would not have happened for the most part without this intervention, which is wild. And so to look at that in terms of the fertility rate, this total fertility rate, we're talking About. So in Georgia, remember, we said it was 1.76 to begin with?

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

And then within a space of 24 months, we actually see it rise to 2.3. So that's quite a big jump.

[Blythe Terrell]

So 1.7 to 2.3 in two years. I mean, it really feels like people went home from church that day and started making babies.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

That is what we do. Observe. We see within nine months of this announcement, there is a jump. A spike in fertility. Exactly. Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

Oh, my gosh, that's really something. If I were Ilya ii, patting myself on the back.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, but, like, who would be the equivalent of Ilya II in the United States? This is not a repeatable intervention. Or is it?

[Blythe Terrell]

Right? I mean, listen, funny you should ask. Okay, so who's the best person to do this job in the US if somebody was gonna do it, I'm like, now I'm like, okay, Tom Hanks. Everybody loves that guy. So if Tom Hanks was gonna baptize your kid, maybe, or Beyonce or Taylor Swift, what do you think? Rose?

[Rose Rimler]

None of those people have the time. No, when you said Tom Hanks, I was like, that could convince me.

[Blythe Terrell]

That could convince you to have a kid. You'd be like, I'd have three kids. If Tom Hanks.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, if he came over and circumcised them.

[Blythe Terrell]

Circumcised?

[Rose Rimler]

Well, I'm Jewish.

[Blythe Terrell]

All right, so Tom Hanks has to do the circumcision. If he's up for that. Let's make a deal.

[Rose Rimler]

If Tom Hanks will be the moil to my third and above children. No.

[Blythe Terrell]

I don't know.

[Rose Rimler]

It's such a good question. It's a good question.

[Jisoo Hwang]

And it's a little.

[Rose Rimler]

There's almost something sad about it because we're so divided as a country and we have all these, like, micro cultures within the country. It's a little bit sad that I can't think of any one uniting, beloved person.

[Blythe Terrell]

I got it, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

Dolly Parton.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh, yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

Dolly Parton gives you a wand.

[Rose Rimler]

She comes in like Linda the Good witch and waves her wand over your child.

[Blythe Terrell]

All right, well, I mean, should we.

[Rose Rimler]

Start our letter writing campaign to Dolly Parton? Is that what you're saying?

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay, that's all I need. Okay. So, but to go back to what happened in Georgia, I mean, like, that's one potential downside to this influencer thing, right? Not really replicable. You don't all. You can't guarantee it's gonna work. Right. And then another caveat is that their big, huge baby Bump. It did not last forever.

[Rose Rimler]

Mm. Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. So it's since, like, bumped back down. I mean, that could be because Ilya II is in his 90s now. He's, like, not doing as many of these baptism Overall, though, like, here's where I landed with neha. Bottom line, don't put all your eggs in the influencer basket.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

Exactly, exactly.

[Blythe Terrell]

You know, instead, NEHA had a different suggestion.

[Dr. Neha Diopa]

So what is easier, but rather maybe a more painful is to just address women's need of how to make their motherhood easier. Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

You know, nobody wants to do that.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah. It seems like a more direct approach.

[Blythe Terrell]

Slightly more straightforward, you say? Yeah. I mean, and of course, like, this is what a lot of people say we should be doing in the U.S. you know, and the Trump administration is supposedly considering some of these ideas. So there are a few things, policy wise, that might move the needle here. One of them is making childcare more available and also cheaper. Duh. Okay. Yes. And there's this big review that came out recently, and one study that was in this review came out of Belgium, and it found that if you increase childcare slots for young kids by just 1 percentage point, the odds of somebody having their first baby goes up more than 10%. So it bumps it. Another big thing. And seems to be giving people parental leave. Yeah. Welcome to the Rose tells me.

[Rose Rimler]

Duh.

[Blythe Terrell]

Portion of the episode. In Austria, they increased parental leave from one year to two years and saw that it led to about 12 additional kids per 100 women.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, yeah. So it's not nothing. But I do have to kind of caveat some of these a bit, Rose, because although these things, like, can make a difference, I think we have pretty good evidence that they do, and they can be good for people who, like, want to have kids. We don't have evidence that they're, like, massively swinging the pendulum.

[Rose Rimler]

Right.

[Blythe Terrell]

Like, even in both these countries. I just mentioned Belgium and Austria, it's not like their total fertility rates are now above this 2.1 level. Right. Like, even with these policies, it's not like it's like a total massive reversal of all these trends we've been seeing for years.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay. But I mean, is it possible it will. Like, it's just. It's slow, but it'll get there. Like, is it changing things in the right direction? At least getting to that number?

[Blythe Terrell]

It's so hard to tell. It's like, if you look at the numbers, it's like they sort of bounce up a little bit sometimes and they go back down it's just I don't think we have great evidence that like anyone has reversed the decline in the long term policies. Right. I do not think we have great evidence for that.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

All right, so I want to talk about a couple more big ideas here that come up in terms of policy. Like this thing where you basically give people money when they have a kid.

[Rose Rimler]

And that's an interesting one.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. Cold hard cash, like a one time payment. Trump administration proposal is like $5,000 and it looks like this kind of like cash for kids. I know. Do you like it when I call it that? You're making a face. Well, when you say it like that sounds creepy. Somehow it gets seedy. But overall, so there is a bit of evidence that these payments, like, might get some people to have kids earlier than they would have otherwise. Okay, then that can be good, you know, to sort of have if you want people to have more time to have more kids. But generally the best evidence we have is that it probably doesn't make that much of a difference to the overall fertility rate over the long term. Okay. Another thing that's come up a bunch is giving people better access to things like ivf. So Trump did make some noise about this at the start of his term, but seems to have backed off, actually. And what is kind of interesting here is that making it easier to get ivf, like it seems like it can increase fertility for older women, which you might expect, but it doesn't seem to bump up fertility rates overall.

[Rose Rimler]

Right, right.

[Blythe Terrell]

And you know, there's a couple of other things that have been suggested to the Trump administration, like educating people on their menstrual cycles.

[Rose Rimler]

That's a wild one, because it suggests that the reason women aren't getting pregnant is because they just don't know how to get pregnant. It goes in my ear or it.

[Blythe Terrell]

Goes in my armpit. You know, you laugh and I laughed. But it's actually, it is true that people trying to have kids, like, don't always know their fertile periods. Right. So does that mean you need a class from Donald Trump on your menstruation? I don't know, man. But, you know, I guess the premise is not totally flawed. Okay. But the thing about giving people a medal, you know, I don't know if that's. I don't know.

[Rose Rimler]

You could argue that's part of the. The Georgian influencer. Yeah, I mean, maybe that would have some, but I'm sure no one has tested that.

[Blythe Terrell]

Well, interestingly, there's been some other famous people who have famously done this. Such as Adolf Hitler. Oh, my God, Stalin as well. Also medals offered no clear evidence. I actually looked no clear evidence that it worked. I mean, there was some, like, post war baby boom, you know, like, there's other stuff happening. So I would say that I don't think there's great medal evidence. And again, maybe on the margins you have some people who are like, oh, I want a Trump medal in my house. So I'm going to go from four to five. And you know, while we are on the subject of Hitler, where are you going? Well, I mean, I just have to say that historically, this idea of pronatalism, having more babies for your country, whatever gets tied up in that is also very tied up with white supremacy. There have been papers written about this. Right. Sometimes Christian nationalism. And people who. A lot of people who study this do worry about the part of this movement that wants to keep women at home out of the workforce or come up with policies that end up being coercive, like Handmaid's Tale Y stuff or really limiting contraception, really limiting abortion. So that is just all wrapped up in this.

[Rose Rimler]

That. And there's this idea that it's not just babies generally, it's a specific kind of baby that some people want, like American babies, but by that they mean white American babies.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. And there is, like a lot of that going on in this whole conversation. Right. And you know, and that is tied to another thing that I wanna mention here, actually, because interestingly, if you are worried about your population going down, you know, worried about lack of babies, worried about having not enough workers, there's one thing that you could do which is let more people in, of course, have more immigration.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

And there's actually some evidence that, you know, historically, immigration is one of the things that has, like, buoyed the US that has sort of kept its fertility rates a little higher, that's kept its population more stable and growing. And actually, so the Congressional Budget Office calculates that if immigration goes away, like if immigration stops in the U.S. right, that the U.S. population would start to shrink, like, actually get smaller in 2033, like just eight years from now.

[Rose Rimler]

Oh, wow.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah. So I mean, the fact that the administration is like, deporting so many people, starting to really limit immigration, could end up making this problem worse.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, that makes sense. Although having said that, it's not necessarily a solution forever, because if the world fertility rate is generally going down, then you can't just rely on other countries.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right, right. It's exactly. No, that is totally true. Like, it's not gonna fix the global problem if your global population is going down eventually.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay, so, Blythe, at this point, you've done all this research. You've really looked into this. What do you think the US should do?

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, so here's where I land. I do not see a silver bullet here that will fix this. Right. I don't think we've got evidence for that, but I think it would be smart to do these policies that could move the needle that help people have kids if they want them. This stuff we're talking about, like, affordable childcare, parental leave. And plus, I just think those things are good to do for parents if you want people to want to be parents.

[Rose Rimler]

So even though we don't have evidence that will totally turn things around and fix the problem, we have some evidence that it could help. And who knows how far it'll go if we really threw a lot of. Put a lot of weight into those policies.

[Blythe Terrell]

Yeah, exactly. That's where I am right now.

[Rose Rimler]

So given that, how freaked out are you right about this?

[Blythe Terrell]

So I think the US Fertility rate is pretty far from being at a crisis level. I actually, I talked to a bunch of nerds about this, demographers, economists, who told me that, like, okay, if your fertility rate is below 1, that is concerning, like, that is low. And you're gonna start to see some of these effects we talked about. But most of them were actually, like, not panicking about rates that were like 1.5 or more, which is where we are. They were like, if you can keep that. If you can keep that kind of stable, if you can make it sort of stable, you can adjust other stuff. Like, you can do things to make it so that your. Your healthcare, your other services, like, don't fall off a cliff. Right. Like, you can plan for it.

[Rose Rimler]

You have a smaller society, but.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. And nobody that I talked to thought that humanity was in danger of going extinct anytime soon.

[Rose Rimler]

That brought that off my list of things that keep that keep me up at night.

[Blythe Terrell]

So I think you safely can. There's actually another thing that makes this not feel like a crisis to me, and that is that, by and large, lots of people still do want kids. And actually there was this. A lot of scientists pointed me to this big UN report that said that on average, people want more kids than they are currently having. Like, they were like, the real crisis is actually people can't have the kids they want. And I was like, well, then this is not a crisis of desire. So to me, weirdly, it kind of leaves me a Little more optimistic, actually. At least that we're not headed toward, like, Children of Men, if you remember that famous movie, Right. Where it's like no children anywhere.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah, I guess it's better than that.

[Blythe Terrell]

The bar. That's where the bar is.

[Rose Rimler]

That's a pretty low bar, but okay.

[Blythe Terrell]

Right. But I am a little bit like, okay, well, if people want to have K, I am a little bit like, if we can help them figure out how to make that happen. That does make me feel better. Mm. All right. What about you? Where does it leave you? I. I'm worried.

[Rose Rimler]

I'm more worried than I was.

[Blythe Terrell]

Oh, wow.

[Rose Rimler]

I would say, yeah. That's interestingly freaked me out. Good job, Blythe.

[Blythe Terrell]

Oh, really? Oh, no. Why are you freaked out?

[Rose Rimler]

It just the things that you say will help or are likely to help are not things that I see the world's governments doing right now.

[Blythe Terrell]

Well. Well, ours isn't true, you know, I mean, I think other countries, maybe there's a little bit more movement. Right.

[Rose Rimler]

Yeah.

[Blythe Terrell]

So you, however, are just gonna have to wait for your period class and your medal.

[Rose Rimler]

Okay. I'll get started on that right away.

[Blythe Terrell]

Okay. Thanks for joining me for this, Rose.

[Rose Rimler]

Thanks, Vlad.

[Blythe Terrell]

That's Science Versus. This week's episode has more than 100 citations. If you want to check those out, you can find them in our transcript, which is linked in our show notes. Now, I want to give a quick shout out to another fun science show. It's called Sing for Science. And this is an interview show that pairs musicians and scientists in conversation. Every episode focuses on a song by the artist and how it connects to that scientist's area of expertise. Their latest EP features one of my favorites, country star Casey Musgrave talking with mycologist Paul Stamets about psilocybin containing mushrooms. So check it out. That's Sing for Science. This episode was produced by me, Blythe Tyrell, with help from Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne, Michelle Dang and Akedi Foster. Keys, we're edited by me. And our executive producer is Wendy Zuckerman. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Fact checking by Diane Kelly and research help from Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord. So Wiley, Emma Munger, and Bumi Hidaka. A very special thanks to all the researchers who spoke to me for this episode. Thank you. Thank you. Including professor ronwe Caldeger Hart, Dr. Jana Bergswick, Professor Amy Choi, Dr. Gretchen Dunauer, Dr. Emily Clancher Merchant, and Professor Landon Schnabel. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios Original Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. We'll fact you soon.