economics

The cause of population decline

At present, only poor countries have reasonable fertility.   The fertile age white population is everywhere declining, and the most intelligent and educated women reproduce the least. But quite recently affluent countries such as pre Weimar Germany had high fertility, and many poor countries have fertility as low as the worst of the west.

Conversely, Rome in its decline, and Sparta in its decline, had terribly low fertility, though their only methods of birth control were vice, abortion, and infanticide, and their living standards were relatively low compared to modern standards.

The demographic transition is nothing to do with whiteness, nor with wealth and economic development.  Nothing to do with having a Malthusian system.  It is not poverty that makes the difference.

Nepal is a good example of a very poor third world country with low fertility comparable to that of the advanced west – but its low fertility is a mix of very high fertility women and very low fertility women, which should make it easy to see what causes the difference.

in Nepal, which is as third world and poverty stricken as you can get outside Africa, females that have been exposed to western schooling to age twelve or older have a fertility rate similar to that of the most infertile wealthy advanced white western nations,

Schooling Children
No schooling 6.67
Islamic Schooling, no Western Schooling 7.78
Western Schooling to ages 7 to 11 4.5
Western Schooling to ages 12 to 13 1.44
Western Schooling to ages 15 to 16 1.57
Western Schooling to age 17 and above 1.50

If they don’t get that class at age 12, because they went to a Muslim school, or because they did not go to school, their expected number of children is six or seven, even if they went to a high class ladies Muslim school.  If they got western education at age twelve, then they have western fertility levels, far below replacement.

There is something taught to twelve year old girls in Nepal in Western schools, but not in Muslim schools, that drops fertility from six or seven children per female to less than 1.5 children per female.

This is what Boko Haram is complaining about.  They view it, reasonably enough, as genocidal.

This Nepalese data is consistent with the high fertility of the Amish: The Amish absolutely insist on controlling their kids schooling. They also ban television. They allow their adolescent kids out into the world to visit the fleshpots, but not, however, the classrooms. They fear both the classrooms and the televisions, but primarily the classrooms.

I would say that it is memetic infection, the same memeplex, propagated both by soap operas and the education system, each reinforcing the other, but primarily by the education system.

And that memeplex is exemplified by “Sex and the City”, and the nine year old learning to put a condom on a banana, but not learning that a woman’s fertility window is a lot shorter than that of a man, and a lot shorter than her career window – learning that normal everyday behavior for women is to follow the same life plan as men – and not learning that that life plan, naturally enough, is consistent with men producing children, but not really consistent with women producing children.

Here is my theory explaining this observation:

If women are emancipated, fertility collapses. But merely legal emancipation has limited effect, because females are extremely vulnerable to social pressure and conformity, so that peer pressure, social pressure and parental pressure, can and routinely does prevent emancipation from being effective, and thus prevents fertility from collapsing.

So the Cathedral has to reach into society through propaganda in school and television, and remake society to emancipate women, then fertility collapses because the girls spend their hottest and most fertile years fucking bad boys.

If women are low status relative to males, all males look attractive to them.

If women are restrained from screwing outside of marriage, if they cannot get their hands on males and males cannot get their hands on them (except in parentally supervised dancing with parentally selected partners) they want to get married. If all males look attractive to them, they can get married, and will love their husbands.

If women get married young, love their husbands, and submit to their husband’s authority, they will have a reasonable number of children – around six or seven, if the husband can afford it.

If, on the other hand they perceive themselves as equal to males, they will look around for males that are somehow higher status – typically convicted felons and such, for example Jeremy Meeks. They spend their fertile years fucking those guys, and only when the booty calls stop, only then do they condescend to reluctantly notice someone who is inclined to support and father children.  And many of them, particularly the most intelligent, the most highly educated, the most wealthy and successful, for example the infamous lawyer pussy, when they are too old to get booty calls from Jeremy Meeks any more, will find all males that might return their interest beneath their notice, and wind up as cat ladies.

Another factor inculcated in western schooling is the false life plan, the female equivalent of the blue pill.

Girls are told that the normal respectable thing, the thing that all girls do, is put their career first. Marriage and family will just happen by itself, with no need to make it happen.  Presumably it will happen while they are fucking Jeremy Meeks.  They are told that teenage pregnancy is a terribly bad thing, cause it destroys your career.

Of course pregnancy will have the same effect on a woman’s career at any age – and since her fertility window is a lot shorter than her career window, and a lot shorter than a male’s fertility window, it would make a lot more sense to worry about marriage and family first, career late.   She will never be as hot as she was when young, but she will probably be a lot more competent at making money when somewhat older.

Girls are not told that women are hypergamous while men are polygynous, and thus the most attractive man who is interested in them is likely to be a lot more attractive than the most attractive man who is interested in marrying them and having children with them. They are told that men and women are just alike in the sexual natures, and so are not told that they can score a much more attractive man for a one night stand than they can score as a boyfriend, and much more attractive man as boyfriend than as a husband – and that every additional boyfriend and one night stand means the quality of husband that they can attract is correspondingly less.  In consequence the large majority of women spend their hot years having sex with the small minority of the most attractive men – who of course are in no position to father their children and have no intention of doing so.

The false life plan, the female equivalent of the blue pill, is that a girl can focus on her career, and spend her youth, her beauty, and her fertile years fucking Jeremy Meeks, and marriage and family will just spontaneously happen without her having to do anything about it or think about it or sacrifice anything for it.

Female emancipation enables women to indulge in the false life plan, and they are also falsely told that it is a good idea.  Probably around age twelve in school.

To have eugenic population growth: Abolish welfare and put female sexuality and reproduction under parental control, until they get married whereupon their sexuality and reproduction comes under their husband’s control.

Parents will delay their daughters reproduction until their daughters get married. Parents will only allow males able and willing to support a wife and children to court their daughters, and only allow them to court their daughters for marriage, not sex.

Wealthy people will marry young, poor people will marry late.

In order to reproduce successfully, reproduce biologically and culturally, men and women have to behave in different and complementary ways.

For the family unit to function, it has to have a single head, and that head has to be the man, because women will not endure sex if they are the head. And it has to be legally and socially binding.

If, on the other hand, women are free, their natural inclination is to engage their hypergamy with a minority of males outside the family unit, which natural inclination is reinforced as the normal life course, normal behavior, by school and television, which results in non reproductive sex. Successful societies repress this, frequently employing alarmingly drastic means, but the ordinary pressures of social conformity and adverse economic and life outcomes suffice to reduce it to quite manageable levels. Adulteresses in Timor Leste are punished only by social stigma and divorce without property, rights to children, or alimony. Stoning is not required to reduce the problem to acceptable levels.

79 comments The cause of population decline

chris b says:
Candide III says:

Regretfully, not all of us have a Times subscription. I can only see half of the first paragraph. It does not really make me want to see the rest, because it looks just like a dozen other screeds on the same topic that are regularly eviscerated by Dalrock&co.

spandrell says:

Great find. This should go in the canon.

Candide III says:

No, it shouldn’t. It’s not even Carlyle’s “wash and vapidity, good only for the gutters”, it comes straight from the gutters. Please see my comment below.

spandrell says:

There’s other data out there.
https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FA52/FA52.pdf
http://www.iids.org.np/Sambad25_26.pdf

Not as dramatic as this, but the differential is clear. Something about modern schooling discourages fertility in a way that Islam doesn’t.

I don’t recall that my co-ed schoolmates were told about Jeremy Meeks in Junior High, but the atmosphere certainly wasn’t very conducive to thinking about family formation.

jim says:

https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FA52/FA52.pdf shows similar but substantially less extreme results.

The difference, however, is that they don’t break out Muslim education from government education, which would naturally give a considerably less extreme result.

They compare Muslims with non Muslims, but fail to compare Muslim educated girls with government educated girls, which is the interesting point, if we are looking at the question of whether something specific taught in school lowers fertility.

We observe in Nepal http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Full%20Report_415.pdf extreme repression directed act Muslim schools. Muslim religious authorities want Muslims to send their children to Muslim school. Government wants to “Mainstream”or suppress Muslim schools.

Candide III says:

@spandrell: I don’t disagree with the basic thesis. My point is entirely methodological. I don’t want us to cite shoddy ‘studies’ just because they agree with our prior ideas. If we do so, how are we better than e.g. the ‘stereotype threat’ crowd who’s now circling the wagons because the effect cannot be replicated?

@jim: that may be true, but I can think of less nefarious reasons for wanting to suppress Muslim schools than engineered fertility reduction. Consider Rohingya in Burma. Also what spandrell said below: Nepal probably does not need to double its population every 30 years. For that matter, neither do any Western countries. I’d argue that what all these countries need is a reproduction regime like the one that prevailed in England in the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, described in Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”.

david says:

What spandrell said.

This is really the most succinct explanation of the issue I’ve seen.

Nice work.

Erik says:

Link is broken, it appears to have an unescaped space which should be %20.

http://www.socialinclusion.org.np/new/files/Irsahad%20Khan_1365502062dWld.pdf works for me.

Nitpicks aside: Wow.

The broken mindset really shows through in a lot of the phrases in this paper.
“risk factors associated with high fertility”
“Although Nepal has seen substantial improvements in its reproductive health outcomes, the total fertility rate is still high”

Jim C says:

Great piece.

Steve Johnson says:

The reason this works:

“The false life plan, the female equivalent of the blue pill, is that a girl can focus on her career, and spend her youth, her beauty, and her fertile years fucking Jeremy Meeks, and marriage and family will just spontaneously happen without her having to do anything about it or think about it.”

…is basically because women’s programmed life path is for everything in her life to happen “spontaneously” – healthy societies simply restrain the possibilities of what women are likely to spontaneously do.

Read any game forum for descriptions of this – the better men can guide women to the point where “it just happened” the more successful they are.

Mel says:

Why waste your best-looking years raising kids? Have a great time, start a career, buy a home. When it’s time for the next step, have children. If you want them.

Dave says:

Homo Sapiens must be the only species wherein reproductive success is *inversely* correlated to material abundance. I suppose this is because the upper class in any society spares no expense buying (and bidding up the price of) positional goods for their children to keep them in the upper class. They try to concentrate their wealth and power by having fewer kids, which ultimately leads to their extinction.

The upper class magnanimously strives to pass this attitude down to the lower classes via mass media and public education, thinking it a cause rather than an effect of their own high status.

But you also have a point that fertility is inversely correlated to female self-esteem. Whatever the natural level of female self-esteem, Western education elevates it, while Islamic education crushes it. My wife has such low self-esteem that she always hunches her shoulders, but she’s given me four kids so far.

red says:

Humans also regulate the size our populations much better than other animals. We’re also the only species to controll our own evolution through war and genocide instead of natural selection.

Dave says:

No, this is true of all apex predators — lions, polar and grizzly bears, wolves, etc. are quite willing to hunt their own species if its population gets too high.
War and genocide *are* natural selection, because unlike, say, a farmer breeding chickens for meatier legs, the winner is not chosen by a higher power.

Red says:

Good point. Though our method of natural selection is a lot faster than natures method.

jim says:

Homo Sapiens must be the only species wherein reproductive success is *inversely* correlated to material abundance.

I think this is is an accident of the fact that Cathedral domination is positively correlated to material abundance, being a heretical descendent of a world dominating religion. Poor people that emancipate women don’t reproduce either.

We have had group selection for patriarchy for a very long time, but group selection is biologically ineffectual compared to individual selection.

Alan J. Perrick says:

That’s what I got from you article as well, “Jim”. Well done reminding these commenters.

Dave says:

I don’t think it’s an accident, because since ancient times, every society that achieved two or three generations of physical and nutritional security found some excuse to emancipate its women. Even Islam didn’t prevent the Abbasid Caliphate from liberating women in the 800s, with disastrous results.

Group selection disappears when one group utterly dominates the known world and no longer has to compete for resources. This doesn’t last; all such societies are ultimately conquered by patriarchal barbarians.

jim says:

The future belongs to those that show up.

peppermint says:

Pay attention to Plato. The democratic man is the son of the oligarchic man, who is the son of the timocratic man; the son of the democratic man is the tyrannical man.

Jim has studied the efforts of Augustus to increase the Roman birth rate.

The philosopher-king of Rome could not solve the decadence problem, so it fell to Constantine to use growing influence of the minority group of Christians to take power, upon which he declared that the gods of Rome were dead and people should follow the Apostle Paul.

R7_Rocket says:

The Cathedral’s Blue Pill ideology is its own doom.

red says:

It’s the doom of us all.

Fxkv says:

Are Amish girls as well as boys permitted to explore the fleshpot-realms? Seems doubtful. Young-man-pre-conversion-wildness is a Protestant archetype; young-woman-pre-conversion-wildness isn’t. Many wouldn’t return as marriageable virgins.

jim says:

“Send” was misleading. They are allowed to wander off, rather than required, and it is normal and expected that they do wander off. Apparently most either don’t wander off, or do return as marriageable virgins.

Piano says:

The amish, as a whole, don’t actually send their kids out into the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa#Leaving_the_community

J says:

Paradoxically, ignorant low-IQ Nigerians clearly understand that Western Education sterilizes their young females and they are doing something about it, while we have extra-high IQ Jims to write long articles on the same thing yet we are totally impotent to do something about it. We watch our sisters turn into cat ladies and do nothing.

jim says:

Nigerians are the fast boiled frog, we are the slow boiled frog. Also, this is being imposed on them by obviously alien outsiders who say out loud what they are doing, while this is imposed on us by people who are supposedly us.

J says:

Defeatist. By saying it is being imposed on us, you are saying nothing can be done. The Nigerians at least burn down the universities and schools that are sterilizing their sisters and daughters. They are fighing back. Somewhat brutally to my taste, but they do what they can.

peppermint says:

which is more defeatist: telling the truth, or trying to tailor a lie to the conditions in an attempt to trick people into Fighting Backâ„¢?

R7_Rocket says:

Fighting back does make sense, if the empire can no longer pay its legions enough to impose its will on you.

Zach says:

Fantastic!

Zach says:

“Girls are not told that women are hypergamous while men are polygynous”

I know I know… I could look all this shit up, but is the above roughly the same as polygamy. The word I remember you attributing to males’ dersire?

Zach says:

Nevermind. Read it wrong.

jim says:

A man wants lots of different women, a woman wants the very best man – who is likely to be better than the man who is willing to tolerate her hanging around.

Dave says:

A woman wants one man to satisfy her every need.

A man wants every woman to satisfy his one need.

Candide III says:

A judicious man looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him.

Let me take a straw poll. Who has actually opened the pdf and read the study? In the meanwhile, I’ll write up my impressions and conclusions. I will post them a little later today.

jim says:

He tells us:

The Madarsa (Muslim School) are running traditionally. They should be upgraded and improved considering the formal school so that government has to pay attention toward mainstreaming of Madarsa.
?
Madarsa education does not seem to be effective to bring about change in the fertility behavior of the women. Hence the recommendation should be directed toward making Madarsa education an effective measure to bring change in fertility behavior.

It is interesting that his recommendation is gibberish – presumably what he actually means would be shocking if expressed in plain words.

Candide III says:

Yeah, I noticed that bit too. Although, considering that this is a report to something called Social Inclusion Research Fund, such a conclusion should not be surprising. Lots of people think that there are far too many humans. You might remember the “Population Bomb”.

spandrell says:

Not a stupid idea given the circumstances in Nepal.

Candide III says:

Indeed. Leftists sometimes do have the right ideas. Can you imagine Nigeria with 400 million people in it?

Red says:

It’s a rather dumb idea when the people who end up making most of the babies are the dumbest and least successful of the lot. If you want a system to reduce over population and promote eugenics then you want a system like China one child policy. The less intelligent, successful, and rich Chinese males are being bred out of existence as we discourse while the most successful are replacing them.

Red says:

I’ve worked with public grant writers for the past 10 years. I no longer believe in the validity of any statistical study that I can’t verify though a visual survey.

spandrell says:

FWIW:

The fund was set up in 2005 and is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Norway, represented by the Royal Norwegian Embassy (RNE) in Kathmandu. SNV Netherlands Development Organisation in Nepal functions as Secretariat of SIRF.

The idea of small European countries without even any historical relationship funding political interference in foreign countries is just bizarre.

jim says:

All ngos are the state department in thin disguise. Norway is just laundering US influence.

spandrell says:

We need to know more about ‘Influence Laundering‘. There’s got to be a lot more of this stuff. How does it work?

peppermint says:

Ah yes, the question Moldbug assigned us before he ascended into mathematics. We’ve heard about crapademia and ngoistan and had many promises of a theory.

If anyone knows, it’s probably Scott Alexander, who’s too smart to remain completely oblivious and is resolutely plugged into the system.

Was Quisling laundering influence from Nazi Germany? Is the US embassy in Iraq an NGO? Who’s paying for queer theory professorships? How did English literature departments go from studying what old White men wrote, to writing essays about how evil those old White men are?

Candide III says:

Ah yes, the question Moldbug assigned us before he ascended into mathematics.

You mean before he went off to play with Urbit.

Xavi' says:

The Human Female, besides speech, which even that she is in adequate has not evolved one iota since leaving the caves she brutally reigned over with her Hypergamous behavior, wanton disregard for male life in her savage Matriarchy, which we find ourselves in again only this time masked by technological advancement.

There is an alternative to Jims suggestion. We must as a species and as men realise the human female has expired as a useful cog of the human family. Failure to recognise such is a fundamental flaw in biology. The longer the postponement on the invention of the artificial womb, Civilisation can always be held hostage by the female, unless Progressivism can be stamped out, of which truthfully Reactionaries for all of their prose, Philosophy, style and brilliance, are simply too late.

The female will always hurtle man into a dark age, as Weininger informs us, her spirit can only generate entropy. That in essence is the Feminine, a Metaphysically chaotic being that thrives upon destruction, discord and strife.

The longer it remains taboo that the human female, should preferably be bred in limited numbers merely for aesthetic value and the artificial womb is necessary for man to exist as free beings, the longer this will continue. Contrary to the Feminist belief, man for his endeavors, invention, passion and creation in the arts, technology and sciences is the more deserving of the two to exist into the future. As long as man exists and his imagination exists, wonderment will never cease upon this planet. If man, the human male is extinguished, the brightness of this planet perishes.

Steve Johnson says:

Aren’t you late for a school shooting somewhere?

Alan J. Perrick says:

It would be as hard to organise that as anything else, and much less traditional.

Do you believe this was the same mechanism that caused low fertility in Rome and Sparta (and Greece more generally?)

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll also remark again that Spengler’s book
“How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)” presents a fair amount of evidence that humans cease reproduction when they lose their religious faith. For example, for Jews in America, fertility among the ultra orthodox is very high, among the orthodox is moderate, among the conservatives is low, among the reform is lower still, and among the totally lapsed is lower still.

Red says:

Female status and freedom reduces fertility. Progressives themselves at admit it when you phrase it as a positive thing.

If you want to talk to a progressive about it phrase it this way: Women’s rights results in women having careens and making their own choices which reduces over population.

jim says:

Sexual autonomy. Having kids means that they cannot respond immediately to a late night booty call from Jeremy Meeks.

Fertile age females want to fuck Jeremy Meeks. If they have kids, cannot. So sexual autonomy creates a powerful incentive to not have kids.

To ensure fertility, have to stop women from fucking Jeremy Meeks.

Alan J. Perrick says:

If you want to talk to a progressive about it phrase it this way: Women’s rights results in women having careens and making their own choices which reduces over population.

Honestly, we need to have more talking points like this one over many of the commonly discussed topics.

But, yes, especially about Malthusians.

A.J.P.

Red says:

Talking to progressive is a useless thing unless your interested in what they actually believe. I just pointed the case out to bolster the fact that female sexual autonomy as Jim puts it has a well know and accepted effect on a on reducing the population of groups it’s introduced to.

Actually trying to discus with them that sexual autonomy causes population crashes with say North American whites and they’ll shut down right away. Their brains go into crime think mode and they’ll deny that female liberation has anything to do with declining fertility rates. Trying to get them to connect the two logically is impossible because progressive ideas must always good outcomes.

Candide III says:

I see no-one has stepped forward with comments on the study, so here are mine. Erik et al. may say “wow”, but after picking off the nits, nothing is left. The whole study is just a handful of stale, dried-out nits.

First of all, it is full of plagiarized material, mostly from this study. Even without searching for phrases, plagiarism is obvious upon the face of it, because the quality of English varies too much. There is no bonus for guessing which grade English belongs to the titular author.

Second, the titular author apparently does not understand much about his subject. How else can one explain sentences like the following (p. 40):

Age of the respondent play an important role on fertility status. Above table 18 shows that as the age of the respondent increases it also increases no. of children that women born.

No shit! In fact, the author did not even attempt to take this factor into account, blithely tabulating the number of children ever born for 15-19 y.o. group together with the number for 45-49 y.o. group and using this number of children as his fertility variable. As an aside, the author of the study that was the principal source of plagiarism, though his English is much better, presents as an interesting finding the fact that women who have experienced the death of a child tend to have more children.

Third, statistically speaking, the study is ludicrously underpowered. It has 7 intervening variables, split into a total of over 60 classes, for only 53 subjects. There is little sense in presenting panel data because most variables slice the study pool into groups containing less than 5 persons, often zero. Error bars would be as large as the mean, not that the author troubles himself to present them (but he does state percentages with two digits after the decimal point). Raw data does not make an appearance, although for 53 subjects it would have taken just 3-4 pages. The key finding about the connection between type and level of education and fertility, which jim pounced upon with such energy, is impossible to establish from the data presented in the study, because the key Table 17, titled “Distribution of Respondent by Educational / Literacy Status and Number of Children”, does not take into account the woman’s age as mentioned above.

I applaud jim for unearthing this item, but are we yet reduced to citing semi-literate Islamic plagiarists who spell “The Holly Qur’an” and “Holy Prophet” in the same paragraph (p.18)? I should hope not.

jim says:

Third, statistically speaking, the study is ludicrously underpowered. It has 7 intervening variables, split into a total of over 60 classes, for only 53 subjects. There is little sense in presenting panel data because most variables slice the study pool into groups containing less than 5 persons, often zero.

For most of his variables this is true – because most of his variables do not matter much, hence would need a very large study to find their effects.

But, when he breaks down his group by education, the numbers suffice, in part because the effect is so extreme, and in part because there are only three groups that matter: Muslim schooled, not exposed to schooling to age twelve, and exposed to western schooling to age twelve or greater.

Hence bigger numbers in each group, and the effect is so strong, do not need big numbers.

Candide III says:

Jesus. Jim, please re-read the study. Since he mixes women of different age groups together, there is nothing to tell me whether, for instance, Muslim education has become more prevalent or less prevalent, i.e. whether younger women (who have fewer kids just by virtue of being younger, which he does not correct for) attended more mainstream schools because they became available or more Muslim schools because these became available. Indeed, if you look at table 13, this seems to be the case: the largest age group of women with mainstream education is 15-19 y.o., and the largest group of women with Muslim education is 44-49 y.o. Illiterate women also cluster in older age groups. Look for yourself. There is nothing to tell me whether women who go to Muslim schools are of different ethnicity or SES or whatever, so I cannot judge whether education is the relevant factor. As for group sizes, if you take e.g. table 16 and compare illiterates with Muslim education, error bars for Muslim education should be on the order of 20% unless all 9 women have 7 or 8 children. Group sizes for mainstream education by class are even smaller. In fact, since he does not give standard deviations anywhere, it is impossible to say definitely what the error bars should be, and this fact alone disqualifies this study from any serious use. I wouldn’t want to base such strong conclusions as you do on such a flimsy study. I understand why you latched onto this table 16, it conforms to your idea so well, but it just doesn’t say what you want it to say. It says “File me in the round folder”. I don’t doubt that the content of education is an important factor, as you mention below about Amish, but if you cite such a study in your support, you will be laughed out of court.

jim says:

Progressives believe it, Amish believe it.

Fact is, lots of poor third world countries have subreplacement fertility, or subreplacement fertility among major sectors of their population, and progressives pat themselves on the back for accomplishing this through television shows and education.

So this data is in accord with my priors and progressive priors.

Candide III says:

I don’t doubt it either, but there is no data in this data. Garbage does not shift priors. “Look how much snow outside!” is not a valid argument against catastrophic AGW, even though catastrophic AGW is most probably false.

jim says:

There is certainly some data in this data: That women educated in Muslim schools had lots of kids and women educated in government schools did not.

OK, he failed to control for this, that, and the other, but the effect of schooling is large, and the effect of this, that and the other, is just noise.

Candide III says:

Suppose I give you a study which compares a group of 10 15-year-old girls who studied in mainstream schools and have no children to a group of 10 45-year-old women who studied in Muslim schools and have 7 children each. Since the study does not control for age, it concludes triumphantly that mainstream schooling is 100% effective at preventing childbirth. Would you cite it in support of your thesis? If not, why? After all, the effect of schooling is large, and the effect of age is just noise.

jim says:

The data is not that bad, and it fits with a whole lot of other data – and a whole lot of other behavior, including the intent and goals of this survey.

“Mainstreaming” Muslim schools presumably means bringing their curriculum into line. It would be very interesting because of the motivations and intentions revealed in this survey, regardless of the validity of this survey, to learn what changes are made in a Muslim school that has been “mainstreamed”.

Candide III says:

Yeah, it’s not that bad. This turd isn’t a week old, it’s only the day before yesterday’s, and that makes it acceptable as dessert topping. It even has the shape of a dollop of cream! Bon appetit!

spandrell cited some better data showing the same thing above, and the study plagiarized by this semi-literate specimen is (superficially) OK as well. I linked to it above. As for showing motivation, yes, it does so, but in the words of the plagiarized study, which at least looks legitimate.

KK says:

I’m with Candide here. The study is a shoddy piece of work and basing your conclusions about intranational fertility patterns on it is a strech. The sample sizes are small (N=53 [or 77, where does this come from?]) and the compared groups aren’t normalized at least for age (estimated mean age of ‘Islamic’ and ‘Illiterate’ groups: 37,5 & 36,5 years, mean age of ‘Mainstream’ group: 26,5 years). I’m not interested in combing through the methodology to check whether there’s any mention about the ethnicity or socio-economic status of the interviewed women. I get a familiar sense of indistinguishable intentional obfuscation and cluelessness from this paper. The same kind that I can get from any Ivy League study about US crime rates that doesn’t bother to separate blacks and whites.

I think we all primarily agree on the main premise that Western norms, mores and education decrease the fertility rate of a group, and that the effect is more pronounced on women. Even though this study agrees with that, it’s a very flawed piece to base your case on.

scientism says:

So – providing this data is reliable at all – presumably the Islamic schools are sex-segregated. Could the deciding factor be that most Western schools are mixed sex? It’s interesting that the drop happens right around puberty. What if women’s mating strategies are set at puberty and are highly dependent on whether they’re in a mixed sex environment (surrounded by males who aren’t related) with low supervision (class-size means girls aren’t being watched as they would be at home)? This would make sense of claims that secularisation leads to low fertility as well: traditional, religious schooling tended to be segregated.

Maybe a girl hitting puberty while surrounded by unrelated males is just completely toxic to her development, whereas girls hitting puberty while surrounded by other girls develop decent mating strategies. This seems plausible. (Apologies if this is addressed in the paper, I couldn’t make much sense of the terrible English.)

jim says:

The paper does not reveal much – other that government education is intended to check fertility, and does so.

Amish practice co-ed education (with, of course, strong supervision) and they don’t have a problem with their daughters following poor mating strategies.

The Amish, on the other hand, have been repeatedly subject to extremely determined government attempts to take over the education of Amish children, and have resisted those attempts with stubborn determination, which inclines me to believe that the critical variable is what is taught.

scientism says:

I think in Amish schools they’re more likely to be related, and they probably mix ages too. But consider the typical model of Western mass education:

– it’s coed
– large classrooms with minimal adult supervision
– classes sorted by age, making interaction with siblings and first cousins less likely (interestingly, siblings tend to avoid one another in Western schools)
– professional teaching class means teacher unlikely to be related (again, note that children who are related to teachers are often terribly embarrassed by this fact and the parent will often intentionally keep their distance, making me think that the social dynamic is VERY different compared to traditional schooling)

This to me looks like the perfect environment for a girl going through puberty to develop a pathological dependency on male attention at the expense of developing a rational mating strategy.

Implementing the same organisation, parts of which are necessitated by having mass education at all, seems more plausible than teaching the same thing. Plus, many countries would copy it without thought, whereas Western ideas take longer to gain traction.

jim says:

In a modern co-ed school, a girl is likely to get strong signals that she is sexually high status, which would not have occurred in the ancestral environment – for in the ancestral environment anyone giving her such signals would have gotten a spear through his guts. So, plausible.

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At the population level, these are the four proximate determinants of fertility: percentage of women 15-49 married or sexually active, percentage of women using contraception (and the type of contraception used, as some methods are more effective at preventing pregnancy than others), average length of breastfeeding, and the abortion rate. The transition from high to low fertility has occurred by delaying the first birth and replacing “natural” constraints like breastfeeding (which has actually declined) with the more effective constraints of modern contraception and abortion.

jim says:

The transition from high to low fertility has occurred by delaying the first birth

Primarily by delaying marriage. But since women have to have sex at least once a week, and will get sex once a week or so unless very forcefully restrained by a strongly patriarchal traditional society, delayed marriage, absent tight controls on women and female sexuality, means Jeremy Meeks pops all the virgins, and most men wind up with a wife who has banged no end of men handsomer than them, more charismatic than them, richer than them, and with bigger tools than they have.

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