September 12, 2025 • 55 mins
Is humanity running out of people? Demographer and American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt joins Peter Robinson to explain why birthrates are collapsing across the globe—from China and Japan to Europe and the United States—and what this means for the future of prosperity, freedom, and global power. Can immigration save America? Will Africa remain the great exception? And is there any way to reverse the “baby bust”?
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>> Peter Robinson (00:00):
All around the world, something dire is happening.
For the first time sincethe bubonic plague,
demographer Nicholas Eberstadton Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson,
(00:22):
a fellow atthe American Enterprise Institute.
Nicholas Eberstadt earned bothhis bachelor's degree and
a doctorate in politicaleconomy from Harvard.
His books include the 2016 bestseller,Men Without America's Invisible Crisis.
In recent years, Dr. Eberstadt hasdevoted himself to studying demographics,
(00:46):
in particular to global depopulation.
Our text today, Dr. Eberstadt's recentarticle in Foreign affairs magazine,
the Age of Depopulation.
Nick, welcome back to Uncommon Knowledge.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (00:59):
Thank you for inviting me back, Peter.
>> Peter Robinson (01:02):
All right, the depopulation bomb.
Nick Eberstadt in Foreign Affairs, quote,
humans are about to entera new era of history.
For the first time sincethe Black Death in the 1300s,
the planetary population will decline.
We'll take this continent bycontinent in just a moment,
(01:23):
as you do in your article,but give us an overview.
How has the population behaved over theselast seven centuries since the bubonic
plague and what's happening?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (01:33):
Right, well,
since we last met our intrepid heroesin the 14th century, the world's
population has probably increasedby something like a factor of 20.
Not regularly, but very, very steadily.
The reason for this is becausehuman beings tend to procreate and
(01:58):
they tend to procreate at slightly higherbirth rates than their death rate levels.
And that means gradual and indeedexponential population growth over time.
What's happening now is new andI dare say completely different.
(02:19):
In the past, when human numbers declined,
it was usually as a result of a calamity.
You say the plague, wars,other sorts of pestilence,
upheaval, natural disasters.
This time it's different, global healthis higher than it's ever been before.
(02:44):
It's continuing to increase with a fewvery small footnotes that are exceptions
around the world, but not enough toaffect the overall totals or trends.
What's happening now is thatwe are marching towards below
replacement fertility,towards a global pattern of childbearing
(03:05):
which will be insufficient tosustain global population.
And that is entirely new.
>> Peter Robinson (03:15):
All right, I just have to.
You just said it,you just said it very well.
But it is sostriking possibly because I'm a boomer and
grew up with the notion that wewere suffering overpopulation.
(03:35):
I've called this segmentthe Depopulation Bomb,
after Paul Ehrlich's famousbook of the late 60s.
I think it was a 68 book calledthe Population Bomb that predicted
such population growth that bythe mid-70s he was wrong, of course, but
by the mid-70s,there would be mass starvations.
Now, what he was wrong about, Ehrlich'sthought, conservatives always thought,
(03:57):
was that he missed human intelligence.
He missed our capacity to grow, notthat he was wrong about the population.
The population would grow, butresources would grow even faster.
Okay, but this is not that argument.
This argument is that he waswrong about the numbers.
Population is going to shrink aswe boomers depart from this world,
(04:20):
not continue to grow.
I'm just asking you to repeat it soI'm sure I've got it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (04:26):
We are on a long term march, seemingly unstoppable
to planetary below replacement fertility.
It is possible we alreadyhave breached that threshold.
It'll take us a couple of years becausewe have to look in the rearview mirror
till the statistics catch up with us.
>> Peter Robinson (04:46):
All right, Asia, we'll go continent by continent.
Very briefly, Nick Eberstadt again,this is from Foreign Affairs.
In China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,by 2022, every population was shrinking.
Again, to a boomer like me,the idea that China,
we were raised with a notionthat China was going to grow.
(05:08):
All of these countries are actuallyshrinking and have been for
three years at least.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (05:12):
Yeah, it's really hard to wrap one's head around this, but
the childbearing patternsin East Asia are about 50%
below the level that would be needed forlong term population stability.
We are flirting witha regional average of about
(05:35):
one birth per woman perlifetime in East Asia.
And in some places like Taiwan,like South Korea,
like large portions of enormous China,
we're already well below onebirth per woman per lifetime.
>> Peter Robinson (05:56):
Help me with the math here.
I'm tempted to say the math is as simpleas this, father, mother, one child.
That means the overall populationhalves in each generation,
can that possibly be true?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (06:10):
That's about correct for the region as a whole,
unless something radical changes,
we can expect the risingcohort of babies of newborns
to be half as large asthe parental cohort.
>> Peter Robinson (06:28):
And now China, I'm staying with Asia for just a moment.
China had famously imposeda one child policy in 1979, but
replaced it in 2016 witha two child policy.
And all my Chinese friends in Californiatell me it's very easy to buy your way out
of the two child policy.
If you want three or four,there are fees you pay and bribe.
(06:50):
You can have a big family, big ish familyin China if you want, but nobody does.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (06:54):
No, no, I mean,
what's happened in Chinais really fascinating.
After that catastrophic and
cruel one child policywas not even suspended.
But after the quota was adjusted,
the the overlords in Beijing thoughtthat they were going to be able
(07:16):
to tweak the size of the herd kind ofthe way that a rancher would with flock.
But the pigs in animal farm or whateverthe analogy is, didn't go along with that.
There's exactly the opposite happened.
The total number of birthsdropped by about half.
(07:36):
And what I think we see in thatparticular case is a massive
vote of no confidence inthe Xi Jinping dictatorship.
>> Peter Robinson (07:46):
All right, India once again, Nick Eberstadt.
Sub-replacement fertilityprevails in India.
In India, where urban fertilityrates have dropped markedly in
the vast metropolis of Kolkata,officials report.
Reported that in 2021 the fertility ratewas down an amazing one birth per woman,
lower than in any major city in Germany orItaly, even India.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (08:11):
It's very hard to wrap our heads around this one, Peter.
I mean I first visited Kolkata whenit was called Calcutta in 1975.
It was teeming with children,it was teeming with children.
I mean the fertility level wasprobably around five births per woman.
Now, one birth per woman.
(08:32):
This has happened in your lifetime,in one guy's lifetime that's happened.
>> Peter Robinson (08:35):
And you're not that old, Nick.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (08:37):
Well, thank you for saying that, but
it's happened really fast in anysort of historical measure of time.
>> Peter Robinson (08:45):
Europe, Nick Eberstadt.
For half a century,
Europe's overall fertility rates havebeen continuously sub-replacement.
Half a century since the fallof the Soviet Union,
Russia has witnessed 17 millionmore deaths than births.
The 27 countries of the European Unionreported just under 3.7
million births in 2023,down from 6.8 million in 1964.
(09:11):
Last year France tallied fewerbirths than it did in 1806,
the year Napoleon won the Battle of Jena.
We think of Europe as the centerof Western civilization.
We boomers still think of it that way.
What's going on?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (09:31):
Well, we now have East Asia and all of Europe,
including Russia, as net mortalityzones in our global population.
More deaths than births now.
And that gap looks only to be increasingas far as a demographer's eye can see.
>> Peter Robinson (09:57):
Latin America, you write that birth rates are down throughout
Latin America and the Caribbean and indeedin North Africa and the Middle East.
To quote you once again, Iran hasbeen a sub-replacement society for
about a quarter a century.
And In Turkey,Istanbul's 2023 birth rate was just
1.2 babies per woman,lower than Berlins now.
(10:21):
So if I understand you correctly,across the entire globe,
there are only two exceptionsto this trend of shrinking.
One major exception andone minor exception.
And we'll save the minor exceptionbecause it's the United States.
The major exception is sub-Saharan Africa.
Explain the degree to which it isan exception and then if you can, why.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (10:44):
Every continent on earth except for
Africa is now already below replacement.
>> Peter Robinson (10:53):
Replacement is 2.1 or roughly 2.1.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (10:57):
Every continent but Africa is exhibiting childbearing patterns
that are inadequate to provide forlong term population stability.
They're going to increase for
a little while on population momentum,but that jet can't fly.
(11:17):
I mean, they're all on course for
depopulation absentcompensating immigration.
With the exception fornow of sub-Saharan Africa,
sub-Saharan Africa is still 75% or
Sub Saharan Africa is about100% above replacement.
Africa as a whole, if we add inNorth Africa, maybe 75% above replacement.
(11:43):
But birth rates are decliningbasically everywhere in
the world with tiny exceptions.
And the level of fertilityin sub-Saharan Africa
is about 35% lower thanit was in the 70s or 80s.
There are already places in sub-Saharawhich are at replacement about
(12:07):
to go below replacement, like South Africaoff of the coast of sub-Saharan Africa and
places like Mauritius well belowreplacement already, I mean, stick around.
>> Peter Robinson (12:20):
So my impression, again, you know this,
I'm just asking questions.
I seem to remember reading somewherethat the two, in some ways most
economically hopeful countries insub-Saharan Africa are Nigeria and Kenya.
They seem to have their economiessorted out enough to be growing.
(12:41):
How are the birth ratesin both of those places?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (12:45):
Nigeria is a bit of a mystery because it's population
numbers have been shambolic fora couple of generations.
They fought a civil war over cheating ontheir 1963 census in the Biafran War.
(13:05):
Kenya is a lot clearer, and Kenya's birthlevels are coming down very rapidly.
They're not at replacement yet, butthey're coming down very rapidly.
>> Peter Robinson (13:15):
All right, so this brings us to the minor exception,
the United States of America,quote Nick Eberstadt.
The United States remains the mainoutlier among developed countries.
I must say that brings a little from,to my patriotic heart.
I like being an outlier among developedcountries resisting the trend of
depopulation.
(13:36):
But even in the United States,depopulation is no longer unthinkable,
explain.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (13:44):
What makes the United States demographically exceptional
for affluent democracy is itsunusually high birth levels and
its embrace of immigration,those two things.
For the last 15 years,
(14:04):
the United States has droppedbelow replacement childbearing.
We're now actually 20 plus percentbelow the replacement level.
>> Peter Robinson (14:14):
For the first time in our history.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (14:17):
Well, I mean, we had this happen briefly in the 70s,
there was a dip in the->> Peter Robinson: Not even in the 30s
during the depression.
No, for the 30s, we were still barely above replacement.
There were a couple of years thatyou could find it charting down.
But this is a long period,this past decade and a half,
(14:38):
we kind of have a new pattern.
Our birth levels are higher than forEurope or needless to say, for East Asia,
other places, but not enough to maintainlong term population stability.
On our current trajectory,
we will get to be a net mortalitycountry within a decade.
(15:00):
This is where the immigration comes in.
Immigration has added to our ranks sincethe very founding of our republic,
of course, and it is set to continueto do so, although nobody can
guess exactly what flows ofimmigration are going to look like.
But at this stage, the Census Bureauis now guessing that the US Population,
(15:26):
immigration included, is going to peakwithin the next generation and a half.
>> Peter Robinson (15:34):
All right, why, what's happening?
Nick Eberstadt again.
It is generally believed that economicgrowth and material progress account for
the world's slide into population decline.
Stop there, why are not children
viewed as luxury goods?
(15:56):
Why don't we have more children,the richer?
We are, you and I love kids.
You and I both had a slew of them,
I think we would agree that that isthe most satisfying part of our lives, and
we would therefore suspect thatanybody would find it satisfying.
The idea that the richer you get,the fewer children you have strikes me as
(16:20):
counterintuitive or at least worthexplaining, right there from the get go.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (16:25):
Well, Hoover's late, great Nobel economics laureate
Gary Becker kind of nailedit back in the early 1960s.
Said all other things being equal,the more money you have,
the more of everything you want,including kids.
But at higher levels of income andhigher levels of education,
(16:49):
your tastes may change,you may have preferences for other things.
You may assume that kids means college andgraduate school and
all sorts of expenses that youwouldn't assume were yours
at more modest income level ormodest educational level.
(17:11):
So what we see is a huge change inmentality, for more affluent people.
And that change in mentality,I think, is the real explanation for
why richer people don'talways have more kids.
>> Peter Robinson (17:28):
You write again, I'm quoting you,
all I'm gonna do is quoteyou to yourself here, Nick.
The most powerful fertilitypredictor ever detected,
not how rich an economy is,but what women want.
There is an almost one-to-onecorrespondence around the world between
national fertility levels, and the numberof babies women say they want to have.
(17:50):
I presume that there are surveys ofthis kind conducted all over the place,
all the time.
Okay, here's the next question.
Does this suggest that the children that women have always wanted
fewer children?
That throughout all of historythey found children just trouble?
(18:13):
And that suddenly the availability ofthe pill and other forms of birth control
permit them to limit their families,as they have always wished they could do?
Or have women changed theirminds about children?
All this strikes me as a deep,deep puzzle, am I wrong?
Am I missing something?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (18:31):
You're totally right,
it's a almost unfathomably deep puzzle.
And I think in this same pieceI made my observation that
the person who explainsit deserves a Nobel.
But they don't deservea Nobel in Economics,
they deserve a Nobel in Literature,
(18:51):
because you have to understand theintimate complexities of the human heart.
The profound changes in zeitgeist,the differences
in mores that have unfolded over time,those variations.
We have to remember that weare the world's singular and
(19:15):
most adaptable animal,
that's why Paul Ehrlich got it sobadly wrong.
If we were all insects,he was a professor of population biology,
studied insects, right?
And if we were insects, we would havehad a very bad time after the 1960s.
But we not only adapted our circumstances,
(19:37):
we not only came up with adaptationsthat would allow us to prosper
with greater numbers,we also changed our life expectancies,
we changed our family formations,we changed our desire for children.
>> Peter Robinson (19:53):
Nick Eberstadt, what is happening might be
best explained by the fieldof mimetic theory.
And now you're in trouble becauseyou are required to explain what
mimetic theory is, andhow it might explain what's taking place?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (20:11):
Well, back slightly after the Stone Age when I was in college,
what was really in vogue was thisconcept of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson.
>> Peter Robinson (20:22):
Yes, yes, also an insect man.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (20:25):
Also an insect man, and very plausible argument,
seemingly incontrovertible, was that we as
creatures bound by our DNAhad built in habits and
built in approaches toliving arrangements,
(20:47):
social arrangements and other things.
But now that we see poorcountries in the world,
very poor countries in the world,places like Myanmar, like Burma.
Where women seem to be voluntarilychoosing to have fewer
children that would be requiredto replace their cohorts,
(21:12):
it doesn't look as if we have a builtin mechanism, a built in thermostat.
>> Peter Robinson (21:19):
We're hardwired to children.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (21:20):
Yeah, we're not hardwired to replace ourselves,
it doesn't look like that.
It looks much more as if mimetic theory,
whose I guess great proponent wasagainst Stanford's Rene Girard.
I across the street neighbor.
Wow, how cool is that?
(21:42):
May be able to explain a lotmore of what we're doing.
To oversimplify mimetic theory,it's social imitation that people
are affected by what they see and whatthey want is affected by what they see.
And that there's an enormousamount of complex social learning,
(22:03):
in the arrangements that we live in.
My favorite expert,the great Mary Eberstadt,
uses mimetic theory in this way,
she describes what she callsa cat stuck in a tree problem.
And her point is that anytime thatthe fire department comes out to help
(22:25):
the little kitty get down, that is a catthat was not raised around other cats,
that was a house pet because itnever learned from other cats how-
>> Peter Robinson (22:36):
How to get down.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (22:37):
And just in the same way that kitty didn't
learn how to get out of the tree,
people who are not exposedto the social imitation and
learning that would comewith large families,
find it very hard to regain that.
(23:00):
I'm trained to think as an economistthat people's desires change,
they're kind of exogenous desire forkids goes up,
goes down, people will adjust accordingly.
But it may be that it's very much harderto return to replacement fertility,
once you go far below thatthan we might expect.
>> Peter Robinson (23:21):
So on my favorite as well, but you have a special reason for
considering her your favorite.
Because she is, of course, Mrs. Eberstadt,
on this notion that mimetictheory may explain it,
it could be that having lots ofkids is like the Latin language.
(23:43):
Once its use is lost,once it no longer becomes
current, it very quickly just disappears.
So it's a kind of lost art,lost knowledge, is there something to?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (24:00):
I think there's something to that.
I mean, even if we look around the worldtoday without getting very fancy and
scholarly, we can see thatin a place like Israel,
which is still, I think,the most fascinating
exception to modernitywith regard to fertility.
(24:22):
Secular Jews in Israel reportnotably above replacement fertility,
whereas, for example, secular Jewsin the United States, way below.
>> Peter Robinson (24:35):
Way below.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (24:36):
And so part of it is the context,
part of it is the neighborhoodwhere you live.
Part of it is.
>> Peter Robinson (24:42):
You're explaining something to me that puzzled
me for a long time.
I have an Israeli friend who told me thatin his neighborhood, he has five children.
The next house is six, the next houseis seven, and then there's four.
And he said, the women,
the ladies say to each other,four is the new two.
In other words, it's a kind of shared.
(25:05):
That country is in someways a neighborhood,
and it's a kind ofneighborhood expectation.
That's the mimetic?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (25:12):
That would be mimetic.
I think that would be mimetic andit cuts both ways.
>> Peter Robinson (25:16):
Yes, it cuts both ways.
So can we buy our way out of this?
The New York Times this past spring,
the White House has been hearing outa chorus of ideas in recent weeks for
persuading Americans to get married andhave more children.
One idea would givea $5,000 cash baby bonus to
every American mother after delivery,close quote.
(25:41):
Hungary is famous for
giving tax cuts to families with morethan a certain number of children.
You've written about Mongolia,which gives an award to mothers.
The Mongolian star.
Can we buy babies?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (26:01):
We can try, but I think we've got a century and
more of experience with pronatal policy,and the results are very disappointing for
people who think that we can buy ourway out of below replacement fertility.
The record is that baby bribes orbaby bonuses are very expensive.
(26:25):
And in terms of moving the demographicneedle, they do very little.
Well, what they can do sometimesis that they can create a little
blip among people who kindof take the money and
run, who are planning to have a second ora third child, more or less anyhow.
That's why some Swedish demographerstalk about what they call the Swedish
(26:48):
roller coaster.
When a new pronatalprogram comes into effect,
the birth level goes up a little bit,but then it goes back down after that,
below where it was beforethe program started.
>> Peter Robinson (27:01):
I see, they're buying babies forward, so to speak.
Well, the new geopolitics of this worldthat we are entering from your article
in Foreign affairs, quote,
humanity's shrinking ranks willinexorably alter the current
global balance of power and strainthe existing world order, close quote.
Okay, let's talk througha couple of these coming strains.
(27:24):
Europe and Africa, as you've noted,Europe is already hollowing out.
By contrast, sub-Saharan Africa,to quote you,
tomorrow's world willbe much more African.
But the outlook for human capital insub-Saharan Africa remains disappointing.
Just at the crudest level,over the next 25 years,
(27:46):
aren't there going to be a lotof empty villages in Italy and
Spain and France that look wonderfullyappealing to people from Nigeria and
Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa?
That is to say migration.
Europe feels beset bymigration to begin with,
(28:09):
it hasn't seen anything yet.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (28:12):
There may be a lot more pressure for
migration than we've seen so far.
And there are a lot of situationsin which migration is a win-win.
There are other situations inwhich migration is not a win-win.
One of the reasons it'sgoing to be more difficult
(28:37):
to attract Africans toan emptying Europe is
because the level of skills andknowledge for so
much of the sub-Saharanpopulation is limited.
One of your Hoover scholars,Erik Hanushek,
has done fantastic work on trying tocome up with global measures of skills.
(29:02):
And stunning and uncomfortable as it is,
his numbers suggest thatover 90% of the rising
generation in the sub-Saharadoesn't have even the basic
rudimentary level of skillsthat's measured in these tests.
(29:25):
The basic level one, what would that be?
Looking at a clock that'snot a digital clock and
telling you what the time is,being able to read a simple sentence and
tell you what it means,that sort of stuff.
You've got to have skillsto be able to fit in and-
>> Peter Robinson (29:43):
Once again,
suited to modern society.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (29:45):
Modern economy, that's one of the reasons that I think
that doubling andtripling down on education in sub-Saharan
Africa is an absolute imperative forsuccess of our future.
>> Peter Robinson (29:59):
All right, more geopolitics.
Historian Niall Ferguson,another Hoover fellow of mine,
has already begun referring to ourconflict with China as Cold War II.
And China has only too many allies.
Putin's Russia,the Iran of the ayatollahs,
(30:20):
to which Nick Eberstadt replies, quote,
the coalescing partnership among China,Iran, North Korea and
Russia is intent on challengingthe US-led western order.
But the demographictides are against them.
China's birth crash,the next generation is on track to
(30:42):
be only half as large asthe preceding one will unavoidably
slash the workforce andturbocharge population aging.
So this new world may bringall kinds of problems, but
at least we can relax aboutthe challenge from China.
Or am I over reading this?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (31:03):
Let's put it this way.
I have a sick fascination withthe country of North Korea, and
as far as I can tell,North Korea's GDP is approximately zero.
It causes an awful lot of troubleinternationally outsized trouble.
Because if you have a revisionistradical government in
(31:25):
world order that's predicatedupon cooperation and
complex economic arrangements, you cancause a lot of damage really easily.
>> Peter Robinson (31:36):
Nuts with nukes are going to be a problem whether their
population is growing or not.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (31:40):
And if you have the second largest economy in the world
possessed by the CCP, by a revisionistdictatorship, you can cause a lot
of trouble in even if the balanceof power is tilting against you.
>> Peter Robinson (31:58):
All right.
Military question, China presentsa question mark when it comes to
depopulation and a willingness to fight.
I haven't seen this anywhere else,
actually I haven't seen much of almostanything that you write about anywhere
else that's one of the things thatmakes you so singular as a scholar.
China's military will be mannedin large part by young people who
(32:19):
are raised without children.
Would China risk a force of onlychildren in say and invasion of Taiwan,
question is anybodystudying this question?
Do we have anybody atthe Pentagon who's asking how
demography affects the willingness touse such military as you may have?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (32:42):
I think there's a certain amount of speculation,
at this point we're at the musing andspeculating and
anecdotal analogy portion of the show.
>> Peter Robinson (32:55):
[LAUGH] >> Nicholas Eberstadt
question whether casualty toleranceis going to be affected in China or
in other parts of the worldby the proliferation or
the rise of the only child orof armies composed of only children.
(33:17):
All right, back to the United States once again,
Nick Eberstadt, the United Statesremains the most important
geopolitical exception tothe coming depopulation.
US demographics look great today and
may look even better tomorrowpending it must be underscored,
(33:39):
continued public support forimmigration, close quote.
Well now immigration is one of the mostvexed issues in all of American politics.
According to a Gallup poll last summerthis is actually before the presidential
election, 55% of Americans wantedto see immigration curtailed and
(33:59):
they went on to elect a presidentwho has done just that.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (34:02):
Yep.
>> Peter Robinson (34:03):
All right, so little Robinson thinks this through and
says uncontrolled immigration, or
at least largely uncontrolled immigration,
I think it's fair to say we justlost control of the borders.
Built political opposition to immigrationcould it be that the reverse will?
(34:26):
Donald Trump has said again and again andI believe him that he's not opposed to
immigration he's opposedto illegal immigration.
So could it be that Donald Trumpin closing the borders for
now will permit the countryto relax about the issue and
permit us to achieve a kind ofsanity over the longer term in
(34:47):
immigration policy, do you think that or?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (34:51):
I hope so. >> Peter Robinson
I certainly hope so I mean, I don't think you could
really have done anythingmore brilliant to subvert and
poison American support for immigrationthan the Biden administration did.
By its willful sacrifice ofborder security with Mexico for
(35:15):
half a dozen different reasons.
It's not crazy for American votersto be horrified by that ongoing.
>> Peter Robinson (35:26):
Nobody voted for that.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (35:28):
No, and with border controls, with national sovereignty,
with an approach where we get to choosewhom we invite into our country.
And with our fantasticspecial secret sauce for
assimilating newcomers into loyal andproductive Americans,
(35:51):
I think there's a very verypositive future ahead of us
>> Peter Robinson (35:56):
All right,
I'm quoting from a differentarticle in Foreign Affairs but
I'm quoting you stillthis article is called
America's Education Crisis isa National Security Crisis.
The basic formula for material advancereaping the rewards of augmented human
(36:16):
resources andtechnological innovation will be the same.
But today the US is only neck and
neck with China in total highlytrained workers, close quote.
So even if demographic trends favor us,I believe you argue and argue insistently
vehemently that we have to do a better jobat educating our own population correct?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (36:39):
Absolutely, I mean our advantages come
from our human resources and our dare say
unique political and cultural framework.
Which allow us to unlockthe value in human beings in a way
(37:00):
that you don't see any placeelse in the world really.
And look at what our system does toattract talent from all over the world,
I mean unlocking talent from abroadhas also been one of the great
game changers for the United Statesboth domestically and geopolitically.
>> Peter Robinson (37:24):
So let me ask you a question that we've seen out in the states
we depart for a moment from Washingtonalways a mentally refreshing
exercise out in the states we'veseen this expanding school choice.
Milton Friedman recommendedschool choice six decades ago but
we're finally seeing it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (37:44):
Yeah. >> Peter Robinson
teachers union so embarrassedthemselves during the COVID lockdown.
Perhaps that plays part of it but oneway or the other we now have 29 states,
plus the District of Columbiahave school choice programs.
I believe I should make that 30 states,because I believe
the governor of Texas has now justsigned a new school choice program,
(38:06):
now this is K12 we're talking about,are you optimistic?
That has to be positive.
>> Peter Robinson (38:12):
It has to be doesn't it?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (38:14):
I mean, the thing that we see as very well Peter is,
the worrisome unevenness ofresults within the United States.
We've got a lot of fantastic publicschools we also have a lot of
mediocre ones andwe've got some horrendously bad ones.
Being able to fire a teacher orreward a good teacher
(38:38):
is one of the few leversthat we have that really
seems to increase educationalquality outcomes.
>> Peter Robinson (38:48):
Okay, and then I haven't thought this through but
you being you I suspect youwill have thought it through at
least tentatively,what about higher education?
I mean, it seems to me you could argue,one could argue I don't know what argument
you'd make but that's the point I'msetting up a question for you here.
(39:11):
That our institutions of higher learningand particularly our most prestigious
institutions of higher learning withwhich you are intimately acquainted,
really have become much too complacent,much too self perpetuating.
And that this reactionagainst them which takes
(39:32):
all kinds of forms reaction against DEI.
We have the Trump administration saying,I think you and I would both feel
that the Trump administration says toHarvard, knock off this and this and
this and this or we're gonnatake away some of your funding.
It says to Columbia knock off this andthis and this and this or
we'll take away some of your funding.
(39:54):
My own view is that this and this and thisrepresents an undue intrusion on the self
government of a private institution, butthat it sure is getting at something.
And that to the extent that thisadministration shakes up and
makes in some degree orother more responsive to the wider public,
(40:15):
to the national interest, these eliteinstitutions, it will have improved them.
Now of course there is the other argument.
How dare you say such a thing?
It's taking a sledgehammerto these jewels.
I don't know.
Do you have a thoughts on this?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (40:29):
Yeah, I mean we've got a really confusing set of
developments in higher education andthis isn't new.
I mean, this has been unfoldingreally since the 60s.
On the one hand,we really do have the leading research and
development centers in the worldin our research universities
(40:55):
in the United States that has->> Peter Robinson: They really are jewels.
That part has to change.
>> Peter Robinson (41:02):
Right.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (41:03):
What's troubling, obnoxious and I think should
be totally unacceptable isthe sort of the long march
through the institution byenemies of the open society.
And that has no place in institutionsof free and open inquiry.
(41:31):
And yet it is so obvious in so
many universities, in so many departments,
in whole schools within universities.
One of the things which is mosttroubling to me about political and
public life in the US thesedays is the sort of slow
(41:55):
death of truth that we'reseeing in the public square.
And it's not just statements thatare being made in the White House.
It's the contempt for truth that we seein the media and it's the disregard or
sometimes the hostility towardstruth in the universities.
(42:19):
Dealing with this problem it's not easy.
We don't have a magic wand for it.
This problem developed over the courseof a couple of generations.
It's a historical problem at this point.
I don't know that it'll be resolved inless than a historical period of time.
But sometimes it looks a little bit,if you're in a university,
(42:40):
it looks a little bit likethe battle of Stalingrad.
And it looks like you had house to houseto house combat to get safe spaces back,
safe spaces for intellectual inquiry.
>> Peter Robinson (42:50):
Yes.
A few last questions, Nick.
Here I'm gonna quote you from anotherarticle, but again I'm quoting you.
This is published by AEI itself,the American Enterprise Institute itself,
America's suicide attempt, the sequel.
This is you.
With the 2024 election, we saw a broadpolitical rejection of open borders,
(43:10):
reverse-racism via DEI, andstate abetted censorship.
But instead of correcting course,
the US government now seems to be lurchinginto an alternate mode of self-harm,
embarking on a project of dismantlingthe international order, an order,
ironically, that the United Statesitself painstakingly helped to build.
(43:34):
First of all, you may want toamend that since you published it.
I don't know.
But the question would be, withdemographic trends working in our favor,
the Trump administrationshouldn't be attempting to
dismantle the international order.
It should be trying to shore it up.
Is that the argument?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (43:51):
My argument would be that Americans are going to be
almost certainly worse off,less affluent and
less secure if we sacrifice the,let's call it the Pax Americana,
the that we have helped to buildover the last three generations,
(44:12):
since the end of World War II.
There are many,many flaws in the existing world order and
many, many flaws in our systemof alliances around the world.
There are problems with the tradingsystem, with the finance system.
(44:33):
But again,it's a question of compared to what?
And if we're going to tinker with this orradically adjust it,
we better think firstabout what the unintended
consequences of any bigchanges might be if.
>> Peter Robinson (44:52):
If we end the Pax Americana, the American Peace.
There is no other Pax that will follow it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (45:01):
Well, maybe a Pax upon our house.
>> Peter Robinson (45:03):
All right.
The very first sentence of your essay,the Age of Depopulation.
I'm going back to our master text forthe day.
Today in Foreign Affairs,although few yet see it coming,
humans are about to entera new era of history.
What interests me is thatbeginning dependent clause,
although few yet see it coming.
(45:24):
Why is that?
Why do so?
Why aren't there cover stories onmagazine after magazine after magazine?
Why is it still Nick towhom we must turn to get
the latest on this gigantic issue?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (45:42):
One reason might be that we're kind of accustomed to
thinking that tomorrow is going tobe like today, plus or minus 2%.
It's an easy way to organize one'sthinking and one's behavior.
It doesn't help us much when thereare big radical disruptions ahead.
(46:06):
Another is that the ideology,
I'll call it the myth of overpopulation,
this kind of zombie ideastill circulates much too
far in the intelligentsia andeven in policy circles.
(46:27):
The final thing is that the world'sa big complicated place,
and the realm of the real andthe possible is much wider and
deeper than our own imaginations.
And so our imaginations are probablygonna be slapped by reality.
(46:47):
We're gonna have to rethink everythingthat we assume about these arrangements.
>> Peter Robinson (46:56):
You make an argument.
I say we're on last questions butthis is a basic question.
You make the argument thatdepopulation needn't be bad.
To put it crudely, a quotation andthen a brief video clip.
The quotation is you.
Even in a graying and depopulating world,steadily improving living standards and
(47:20):
material and technologicaladvances will still be possible.
And here is the video clip.
>> Speaker 3 (47:29):
The birth rate is very low in almost every country.
And unless that changes,civilization will disappear.
America had the lowest birth rate,I believe, ever.
That was last year.
Places like Korea, the birth rateis one-third replacement rate.
That means in three generations,Korea will be 3 or 4% of its current size.
(47:50):
And nothing seems to beturning that around.
Humanity is dying.
>> Peter Robinson (47:56):
And Nick Eberstadt answers Elon Musk, how.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (48:05):
We have an extraordinary new,
completely unfamiliar challengein front of us that's
posed by a disinterest inhaving large families,
by a change in our own desire forour own progeny,
for continuing our own family lineages.
(48:30):
Have to remember that we'rethe most adaptable species.
I think we'll be able toadapt to this materially.
As I say, I'm cautiously optimistic thatwe'll be able to maintain prosperity.
My imagination isn't big enough to
(48:52):
really understand how family life is going
to work in a universe where there are so
few siblings and so few relatives.
We'll adapt somehow,something will fill social capital vacuum.
>> Peter Robinson (49:15):
There are people saying AI will do it.
We'll have robots,we'll have computers that know so
much they can keep us company.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (49:21):
Well, we get into the post human world and stuff.
But the threat to the familyis the part of this that I
can't really wrap my head around, I mean->> Peter Robinson: I
thought you were gonna be more cheerful.
I thought you were gonna say calm down,Elon.
We may be half as many, but we'll stillbe well off and enjoying ourselves.
(49:46):
We can shrink as a species for a long time and
still have billions and billions andbillions of people on Earth.
And during that period of adaptation,
we may also find thatthere are intellectual and
spiritual andideological changes that make for
(50:11):
desire for children in consequentialportions of the planet.
>> Peter Robinson (50:19):
Okay, so here's the last question, again, I'm quoting you.
People increasingly prize autonomy,
self-actualization, andconvenience and children, for
their many joys, are quintessentiallyinconvenient, close quote.
Well, now, hold on, let me repeat that.
Autonomy, self-actualization,and convenience.
(50:45):
And I put it to you both asan academic and as a friend,
because I'm attacking you here slightlybecause I know you well enough, Nick.
I put it to you that autonomy,self-actualization, and
convenience represent a recipe foran empty life.
(51:06):
And there is something thatyou haven't quite said,
but that I suspect you feelvery sad about all of this.
That somehow or other I put itto you earlier in the show, but
I put it to you again now.
Somehow or other there is something
(51:27):
spiritually amiss here that Israel,
I once asked a young Israeli woman,
why is Israel stillabove replacement level?
And her reply struck me as very profound.
At least it has always stayed with me.
(51:47):
She said, my country, Israel,my country is still a cause.
People have something to live for, for
which they want to bringchildren into existence.
So here's my last question.
In this depopulating world,what would Nick Eberstadt, a good and
(52:10):
holy man who is also a brilliantdemographer, advise Pope Leo XIV?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (52:17):
All right, I don't think that the Prince
of Rome needs any guidancefrom an economist or
a demographer about what makes formeaning and
spiritual completeness in life.
(52:43):
What I suppose we need outside of clerical
circles is a little bitmore introspection.
There have never been somany people on earth as there are now.
And there's so much loneliness.
I mean, we've cracked the formula forabundance and
(53:05):
that may be necessary forthe sort of a fulfilling
flourishing of our species,but it's inadequate.
That's not game over.
What we're seeing allaround the world with
this birth crash is a change in values and
(53:30):
I think in an awful lotof cases a substitution
of older values formuch less fulfilling ones.
You look at the iPhone and you see so
many people gazing intothat anywhere you go,
even in low income countries,it's like a modern
(53:54):
day Narcissus mirror andit is irresistible.
But it's also so inferior to the realfull life to the technicolor life,
that people can live here.
So the quest for meaning is not going to
end once we head into depopulation,
(54:17):
as I believe we willsooner than most presume.
We're going to adapt and adjust to it and
there's going to be, I think,a great spiritual ferment and
churning as world population contracts.
(54:39):
Give it a couple of generations,give it a little time.
We're a very adaptable animal.
>> Peter Robinson (54:46):
Nick Eberstadt, thank you.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (54:48):
Thank you, Peter.
>> Peter Robinson (54:49):
For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson.
[MUSIC]
All around the world, something dire is happening.
For the first time sincethe bubonic plague,
demographer Nicholas Eberstadton Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson,
(00:22):
a fellow atthe American Enterprise Institute.
Nicholas Eberstadt earned bothhis bachelor's degree and
a doctorate in politicaleconomy from Harvard.
His books include the 2016 bestseller,Men Without America's Invisible Crisis.
In recent years, Dr. Eberstadt hasdevoted himself to studying demographics,
(00:46):
in particular to global depopulation.
Our text today, Dr. Eberstadt's recentarticle in Foreign affairs magazine,
the Age of Depopulation.
Nick, welcome back to Uncommon Knowledge.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (00:59):
Thank you for inviting me back, Peter.
>> Peter Robinson (01:02):
All right, the depopulation bomb.
Nick Eberstadt in Foreign Affairs, quote,
humans are about to entera new era of history.
For the first time sincethe Black Death in the 1300s,
the planetary population will decline.
We'll take this continent bycontinent in just a moment,
(01:23):
as you do in your article,but give us an overview.
How has the population behaved over theselast seven centuries since the bubonic
plague and what's happening?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (01:33):
Right, well,
since we last met our intrepid heroesin the 14th century, the world's
population has probably increasedby something like a factor of 20.
Not regularly, but very, very steadily.
The reason for this is becausehuman beings tend to procreate and
(01:58):
they tend to procreate at slightly higherbirth rates than their death rate levels.
And that means gradual and indeedexponential population growth over time.
What's happening now is new andI dare say completely different.
(02:19):
In the past, when human numbers declined,
it was usually as a result of a calamity.
You say the plague, wars,other sorts of pestilence,
upheaval, natural disasters.
This time it's different, global healthis higher than it's ever been before.
(02:44):
It's continuing to increase with a fewvery small footnotes that are exceptions
around the world, but not enough toaffect the overall totals or trends.
What's happening now is thatwe are marching towards below
replacement fertility,towards a global pattern of childbearing
(03:05):
which will be insufficient tosustain global population.
And that is entirely new.
>> Peter Robinson (03:15):
All right, I just have to.
You just said it,you just said it very well.
But it is sostriking possibly because I'm a boomer and
grew up with the notion that wewere suffering overpopulation.
(03:35):
I've called this segmentthe Depopulation Bomb,
after Paul Ehrlich's famousbook of the late 60s.
I think it was a 68 book calledthe Population Bomb that predicted
such population growth that bythe mid-70s he was wrong, of course, but
by the mid-70s,there would be mass starvations.
Now, what he was wrong about, Ehrlich'sthought, conservatives always thought,
(03:57):
was that he missed human intelligence.
He missed our capacity to grow, notthat he was wrong about the population.
The population would grow, butresources would grow even faster.
Okay, but this is not that argument.
This argument is that he waswrong about the numbers.
Population is going to shrink aswe boomers depart from this world,
(04:20):
not continue to grow.
I'm just asking you to repeat it soI'm sure I've got it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (04:26):
We are on a long term march, seemingly unstoppable
to planetary below replacement fertility.
It is possible we alreadyhave breached that threshold.
It'll take us a couple of years becausewe have to look in the rearview mirror
till the statistics catch up with us.
>> Peter Robinson (04:46):
All right, Asia, we'll go continent by continent.
Very briefly, Nick Eberstadt again,this is from Foreign Affairs.
In China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,by 2022, every population was shrinking.
Again, to a boomer like me,the idea that China,
we were raised with a notionthat China was going to grow.
(05:08):
All of these countries are actuallyshrinking and have been for
three years at least.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (05:12):
Yeah, it's really hard to wrap one's head around this, but
the childbearing patternsin East Asia are about 50%
below the level that would be needed forlong term population stability.
We are flirting witha regional average of about
(05:35):
one birth per woman perlifetime in East Asia.
And in some places like Taiwan,like South Korea,
like large portions of enormous China,
we're already well below onebirth per woman per lifetime.
>> Peter Robinson (05:56):
Help me with the math here.
I'm tempted to say the math is as simpleas this, father, mother, one child.
That means the overall populationhalves in each generation,
can that possibly be true?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (06:10):
That's about correct for the region as a whole,
unless something radical changes,
we can expect the risingcohort of babies of newborns
to be half as large asthe parental cohort.
>> Peter Robinson (06:28):
And now China, I'm staying with Asia for just a moment.
China had famously imposeda one child policy in 1979, but
replaced it in 2016 witha two child policy.
And all my Chinese friends in Californiatell me it's very easy to buy your way out
of the two child policy.
If you want three or four,there are fees you pay and bribe.
(06:50):
You can have a big family, big ish familyin China if you want, but nobody does.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (06:54):
No, no, I mean,
what's happened in Chinais really fascinating.
After that catastrophic and
cruel one child policywas not even suspended.
But after the quota was adjusted,
the the overlords in Beijing thoughtthat they were going to be able
(07:16):
to tweak the size of the herd kind ofthe way that a rancher would with flock.
But the pigs in animal farm or whateverthe analogy is, didn't go along with that.
There's exactly the opposite happened.
The total number of birthsdropped by about half.
(07:36):
And what I think we see in thatparticular case is a massive
vote of no confidence inthe Xi Jinping dictatorship.
>> Peter Robinson (07:46):
All right, India once again, Nick Eberstadt.
Sub-replacement fertilityprevails in India.
In India, where urban fertilityrates have dropped markedly in
the vast metropolis of Kolkata,officials report.
Reported that in 2021 the fertility ratewas down an amazing one birth per woman,
lower than in any major city in Germany orItaly, even India.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (08:11):
It's very hard to wrap our heads around this one, Peter.
I mean I first visited Kolkata whenit was called Calcutta in 1975.
It was teeming with children,it was teeming with children.
I mean the fertility level wasprobably around five births per woman.
Now, one birth per woman.
(08:32):
This has happened in your lifetime,in one guy's lifetime that's happened.
>> Peter Robinson (08:35):
And you're not that old, Nick.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (08:37):
Well, thank you for saying that, but
it's happened really fast in anysort of historical measure of time.
>> Peter Robinson (08:45):
Europe, Nick Eberstadt.
For half a century,
Europe's overall fertility rates havebeen continuously sub-replacement.
Half a century since the fallof the Soviet Union,
Russia has witnessed 17 millionmore deaths than births.
The 27 countries of the European Unionreported just under 3.7
million births in 2023,down from 6.8 million in 1964.
(09:11):
Last year France tallied fewerbirths than it did in 1806,
the year Napoleon won the Battle of Jena.
We think of Europe as the centerof Western civilization.
We boomers still think of it that way.
What's going on?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (09:31):
Well, we now have East Asia and all of Europe,
including Russia, as net mortalityzones in our global population.
More deaths than births now.
And that gap looks only to be increasingas far as a demographer's eye can see.
>> Peter Robinson (09:57):
Latin America, you write that birth rates are down throughout
Latin America and the Caribbean and indeedin North Africa and the Middle East.
To quote you once again, Iran hasbeen a sub-replacement society for
about a quarter a century.
And In Turkey,Istanbul's 2023 birth rate was just
1.2 babies per woman,lower than Berlins now.
(10:21):
So if I understand you correctly,across the entire globe,
there are only two exceptionsto this trend of shrinking.
One major exception andone minor exception.
And we'll save the minor exceptionbecause it's the United States.
The major exception is sub-Saharan Africa.
Explain the degree to which it isan exception and then if you can, why.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (10:44):
Every continent on earth except for
Africa is now already below replacement.
>> Peter Robinson (10:53):
Replacement is 2.1 or roughly 2.1.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (10:57):
Every continent but Africa is exhibiting childbearing patterns
that are inadequate to provide forlong term population stability.
They're going to increase for
a little while on population momentum,but that jet can't fly.
(11:17):
I mean, they're all on course for
depopulation absentcompensating immigration.
With the exception fornow of sub-Saharan Africa,
sub-Saharan Africa is still 75% or
Sub Saharan Africa is about100% above replacement.
Africa as a whole, if we add inNorth Africa, maybe 75% above replacement.
(11:43):
But birth rates are decliningbasically everywhere in
the world with tiny exceptions.
And the level of fertilityin sub-Saharan Africa
is about 35% lower thanit was in the 70s or 80s.
There are already places in sub-Saharawhich are at replacement about
(12:07):
to go below replacement, like South Africaoff of the coast of sub-Saharan Africa and
places like Mauritius well belowreplacement already, I mean, stick around.
>> Peter Robinson (12:20):
So my impression, again, you know this,
I'm just asking questions.
I seem to remember reading somewherethat the two, in some ways most
economically hopeful countries insub-Saharan Africa are Nigeria and Kenya.
They seem to have their economiessorted out enough to be growing.
(12:41):
How are the birth ratesin both of those places?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (12:45):
Nigeria is a bit of a mystery because it's population
numbers have been shambolic fora couple of generations.
They fought a civil war over cheating ontheir 1963 census in the Biafran War.
(13:05):
Kenya is a lot clearer, and Kenya's birthlevels are coming down very rapidly.
They're not at replacement yet, butthey're coming down very rapidly.
>> Peter Robinson (13:15):
All right, so this brings us to the minor exception,
the United States of America,quote Nick Eberstadt.
The United States remains the mainoutlier among developed countries.
I must say that brings a little from,to my patriotic heart.
I like being an outlier among developedcountries resisting the trend of
depopulation.
(13:36):
But even in the United States,depopulation is no longer unthinkable,
explain.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (13:44):
What makes the United States demographically exceptional
for affluent democracy is itsunusually high birth levels and
its embrace of immigration,those two things.
For the last 15 years,
(14:04):
the United States has droppedbelow replacement childbearing.
We're now actually 20 plus percentbelow the replacement level.
>> Peter Robinson (14:14):
For the first time in our history.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (14:17):
Well, I mean, we had this happen briefly in the 70s,
there was a dip in the->> Peter Robinson: Not even in the 30s
during the depression.
No, for the 30s, we were still barely above replacement.
There were a couple of years thatyou could find it charting down.
But this is a long period,this past decade and a half,
(14:38):
we kind of have a new pattern.
Our birth levels are higher than forEurope or needless to say, for East Asia,
other places, but not enough to maintainlong term population stability.
On our current trajectory,
we will get to be a net mortalitycountry within a decade.
(15:00):
This is where the immigration comes in.
Immigration has added to our ranks sincethe very founding of our republic,
of course, and it is set to continueto do so, although nobody can
guess exactly what flows ofimmigration are going to look like.
But at this stage, the Census Bureauis now guessing that the US Population,
(15:26):
immigration included, is going to peakwithin the next generation and a half.
>> Peter Robinson (15:34):
All right, why, what's happening?
Nick Eberstadt again.
It is generally believed that economicgrowth and material progress account for
the world's slide into population decline.
Stop there, why are not children
viewed as luxury goods?
(15:56):
Why don't we have more children,the richer?
We are, you and I love kids.
You and I both had a slew of them,
I think we would agree that that isthe most satisfying part of our lives, and
we would therefore suspect thatanybody would find it satisfying.
The idea that the richer you get,the fewer children you have strikes me as
(16:20):
counterintuitive or at least worthexplaining, right there from the get go.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (16:25):
Well, Hoover's late, great Nobel economics laureate
Gary Becker kind of nailedit back in the early 1960s.
Said all other things being equal,the more money you have,
the more of everything you want,including kids.
But at higher levels of income andhigher levels of education,
(16:49):
your tastes may change,you may have preferences for other things.
You may assume that kids means college andgraduate school and
all sorts of expenses that youwouldn't assume were yours
at more modest income level ormodest educational level.
(17:11):
So what we see is a huge change inmentality, for more affluent people.
And that change in mentality,I think, is the real explanation for
why richer people don'talways have more kids.
>> Peter Robinson (17:28):
You write again, I'm quoting you,
all I'm gonna do is quoteyou to yourself here, Nick.
The most powerful fertilitypredictor ever detected,
not how rich an economy is,but what women want.
There is an almost one-to-onecorrespondence around the world between
national fertility levels, and the numberof babies women say they want to have.
(17:50):
I presume that there are surveys ofthis kind conducted all over the place,
all the time.
Okay, here's the next question.
Does this suggest that the children that women have always wanted
fewer children?
That throughout all of historythey found children just trouble?
(18:13):
And that suddenly the availability ofthe pill and other forms of birth control
permit them to limit their families,as they have always wished they could do?
Or have women changed theirminds about children?
All this strikes me as a deep,deep puzzle, am I wrong?
Am I missing something?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (18:31):
You're totally right,
it's a almost unfathomably deep puzzle.
And I think in this same pieceI made my observation that
the person who explainsit deserves a Nobel.
But they don't deservea Nobel in Economics,
they deserve a Nobel in Literature,
(18:51):
because you have to understand theintimate complexities of the human heart.
The profound changes in zeitgeist,the differences
in mores that have unfolded over time,those variations.
We have to remember that weare the world's singular and
(19:15):
most adaptable animal,
that's why Paul Ehrlich got it sobadly wrong.
If we were all insects,he was a professor of population biology,
studied insects, right?
And if we were insects, we would havehad a very bad time after the 1960s.
But we not only adapted our circumstances,
(19:37):
we not only came up with adaptationsthat would allow us to prosper
with greater numbers,we also changed our life expectancies,
we changed our family formations,we changed our desire for children.
>> Peter Robinson (19:53):
Nick Eberstadt, what is happening might be
best explained by the fieldof mimetic theory.
And now you're in trouble becauseyou are required to explain what
mimetic theory is, andhow it might explain what's taking place?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (20:11):
Well, back slightly after the Stone Age when I was in college,
what was really in vogue was thisconcept of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson.
>> Peter Robinson (20:22):
Yes, yes, also an insect man.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (20:25):
Also an insect man, and very plausible argument,
seemingly incontrovertible, was that we as
creatures bound by our DNAhad built in habits and
built in approaches toliving arrangements,
(20:47):
social arrangements and other things.
But now that we see poorcountries in the world,
very poor countries in the world,places like Myanmar, like Burma.
Where women seem to be voluntarilychoosing to have fewer
children that would be requiredto replace their cohorts,
(21:12):
it doesn't look as if we have a builtin mechanism, a built in thermostat.
>> Peter Robinson (21:19):
We're hardwired to children.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (21:20):
Yeah, we're not hardwired to replace ourselves,
it doesn't look like that.
It looks much more as if mimetic theory,
whose I guess great proponent wasagainst Stanford's Rene Girard.
I across the street neighbor.
Wow, how cool is that?
(21:42):
May be able to explain a lotmore of what we're doing.
To oversimplify mimetic theory,it's social imitation that people
are affected by what they see and whatthey want is affected by what they see.
And that there's an enormousamount of complex social learning,
(22:03):
in the arrangements that we live in.
My favorite expert,the great Mary Eberstadt,
uses mimetic theory in this way,
she describes what she callsa cat stuck in a tree problem.
And her point is that anytime thatthe fire department comes out to help
(22:25):
the little kitty get down, that is a catthat was not raised around other cats,
that was a house pet because itnever learned from other cats how-
>> Peter Robinson (22:36):
How to get down.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (22:37):
And just in the same way that kitty didn't
learn how to get out of the tree,
people who are not exposedto the social imitation and
learning that would comewith large families,
find it very hard to regain that.
(23:00):
I'm trained to think as an economistthat people's desires change,
they're kind of exogenous desire forkids goes up,
goes down, people will adjust accordingly.
But it may be that it's very much harderto return to replacement fertility,
once you go far below thatthan we might expect.
>> Peter Robinson (23:21):
So on my favorite as well, but you have a special reason for
considering her your favorite.
Because she is, of course, Mrs. Eberstadt,
on this notion that mimetictheory may explain it,
it could be that having lots ofkids is like the Latin language.
(23:43):
Once its use is lost,once it no longer becomes
current, it very quickly just disappears.
So it's a kind of lost art,lost knowledge, is there something to?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (24:00):
I think there's something to that.
I mean, even if we look around the worldtoday without getting very fancy and
scholarly, we can see thatin a place like Israel,
which is still, I think,the most fascinating
exception to modernitywith regard to fertility.
(24:22):
Secular Jews in Israel reportnotably above replacement fertility,
whereas, for example, secular Jewsin the United States, way below.
>> Peter Robinson (24:35):
Way below.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (24:36):
And so part of it is the context,
part of it is the neighborhoodwhere you live.
Part of it is.
>> Peter Robinson (24:42):
You're explaining something to me that puzzled
me for a long time.
I have an Israeli friend who told me thatin his neighborhood, he has five children.
The next house is six, the next houseis seven, and then there's four.
And he said, the women,
the ladies say to each other,four is the new two.
In other words, it's a kind of shared.
(25:05):
That country is in someways a neighborhood,
and it's a kind ofneighborhood expectation.
That's the mimetic?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (25:12):
That would be mimetic.
I think that would be mimetic andit cuts both ways.
>> Peter Robinson (25:16):
Yes, it cuts both ways.
So can we buy our way out of this?
The New York Times this past spring,
the White House has been hearing outa chorus of ideas in recent weeks for
persuading Americans to get married andhave more children.
One idea would givea $5,000 cash baby bonus to
every American mother after delivery,close quote.
(25:41):
Hungary is famous for
giving tax cuts to families with morethan a certain number of children.
You've written about Mongolia,which gives an award to mothers.
The Mongolian star.
Can we buy babies?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (26:01):
We can try, but I think we've got a century and
more of experience with pronatal policy,and the results are very disappointing for
people who think that we can buy ourway out of below replacement fertility.
The record is that baby bribes orbaby bonuses are very expensive.
(26:25):
And in terms of moving the demographicneedle, they do very little.
Well, what they can do sometimesis that they can create a little
blip among people who kindof take the money and
run, who are planning to have a second ora third child, more or less anyhow.
That's why some Swedish demographerstalk about what they call the Swedish
(26:48):
roller coaster.
When a new pronatalprogram comes into effect,
the birth level goes up a little bit,but then it goes back down after that,
below where it was beforethe program started.
>> Peter Robinson (27:01):
I see, they're buying babies forward, so to speak.
Well, the new geopolitics of this worldthat we are entering from your article
in Foreign affairs, quote,
humanity's shrinking ranks willinexorably alter the current
global balance of power and strainthe existing world order, close quote.
Okay, let's talk througha couple of these coming strains.
(27:24):
Europe and Africa, as you've noted,Europe is already hollowing out.
By contrast, sub-Saharan Africa,to quote you,
tomorrow's world willbe much more African.
But the outlook for human capital insub-Saharan Africa remains disappointing.
Just at the crudest level,over the next 25 years,
(27:46):
aren't there going to be a lotof empty villages in Italy and
Spain and France that look wonderfullyappealing to people from Nigeria and
Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa?
That is to say migration.
Europe feels beset bymigration to begin with,
(28:09):
it hasn't seen anything yet.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (28:12):
There may be a lot more pressure for
migration than we've seen so far.
And there are a lot of situationsin which migration is a win-win.
There are other situations inwhich migration is not a win-win.
One of the reasons it'sgoing to be more difficult
(28:37):
to attract Africans toan emptying Europe is
because the level of skills andknowledge for so
much of the sub-Saharanpopulation is limited.
One of your Hoover scholars,Erik Hanushek,
has done fantastic work on trying tocome up with global measures of skills.
(29:02):
And stunning and uncomfortable as it is,
his numbers suggest thatover 90% of the rising
generation in the sub-Saharadoesn't have even the basic
rudimentary level of skillsthat's measured in these tests.
(29:25):
The basic level one, what would that be?
Looking at a clock that'snot a digital clock and
telling you what the time is,being able to read a simple sentence and
tell you what it means,that sort of stuff.
You've got to have skillsto be able to fit in and-
>> Peter Robinson (29:43):
Once again,
suited to modern society.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (29:45):
Modern economy, that's one of the reasons that I think
that doubling andtripling down on education in sub-Saharan
Africa is an absolute imperative forsuccess of our future.
>> Peter Robinson (29:59):
All right, more geopolitics.
Historian Niall Ferguson,another Hoover fellow of mine,
has already begun referring to ourconflict with China as Cold War II.
And China has only too many allies.
Putin's Russia,the Iran of the ayatollahs,
(30:20):
to which Nick Eberstadt replies, quote,
the coalescing partnership among China,Iran, North Korea and
Russia is intent on challengingthe US-led western order.
But the demographictides are against them.
China's birth crash,the next generation is on track to
(30:42):
be only half as large asthe preceding one will unavoidably
slash the workforce andturbocharge population aging.
So this new world may bringall kinds of problems, but
at least we can relax aboutthe challenge from China.
Or am I over reading this?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (31:03):
Let's put it this way.
I have a sick fascination withthe country of North Korea, and
as far as I can tell,North Korea's GDP is approximately zero.
It causes an awful lot of troubleinternationally outsized trouble.
Because if you have a revisionistradical government in
(31:25):
world order that's predicatedupon cooperation and
complex economic arrangements, you cancause a lot of damage really easily.
>> Peter Robinson (31:36):
Nuts with nukes are going to be a problem whether their
population is growing or not.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (31:40):
And if you have the second largest economy in the world
possessed by the CCP, by a revisionistdictatorship, you can cause a lot
of trouble in even if the balanceof power is tilting against you.
>> Peter Robinson (31:58):
All right.
Military question, China presentsa question mark when it comes to
depopulation and a willingness to fight.
I haven't seen this anywhere else,
actually I haven't seen much of almostanything that you write about anywhere
else that's one of the things thatmakes you so singular as a scholar.
China's military will be mannedin large part by young people who
(32:19):
are raised without children.
Would China risk a force of onlychildren in say and invasion of Taiwan,
question is anybodystudying this question?
Do we have anybody atthe Pentagon who's asking how
demography affects the willingness touse such military as you may have?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (32:42):
I think there's a certain amount of speculation,
at this point we're at the musing andspeculating and
anecdotal analogy portion of the show.
>> Peter Robinson (32:55):
[LAUGH] >> Nicholas Eberstadt
question whether casualty toleranceis going to be affected in China or
in other parts of the worldby the proliferation or
the rise of the only child orof armies composed of only children.
(33:17):
All right, back to the United States once again,
Nick Eberstadt, the United Statesremains the most important
geopolitical exception tothe coming depopulation.
US demographics look great today and
may look even better tomorrowpending it must be underscored,
(33:39):
continued public support forimmigration, close quote.
Well now immigration is one of the mostvexed issues in all of American politics.
According to a Gallup poll last summerthis is actually before the presidential
election, 55% of Americans wantedto see immigration curtailed and
(33:59):
they went on to elect a presidentwho has done just that.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (34:02):
Yep.
>> Peter Robinson (34:03):
All right, so little Robinson thinks this through and
says uncontrolled immigration, or
at least largely uncontrolled immigration,
I think it's fair to say we justlost control of the borders.
Built political opposition to immigrationcould it be that the reverse will?
(34:26):
Donald Trump has said again and again andI believe him that he's not opposed to
immigration he's opposedto illegal immigration.
So could it be that Donald Trumpin closing the borders for
now will permit the countryto relax about the issue and
permit us to achieve a kind ofsanity over the longer term in
(34:47):
immigration policy, do you think that or?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (34:51):
I hope so. >> Peter Robinson
I certainly hope so I mean, I don't think you could
really have done anythingmore brilliant to subvert and
poison American support for immigrationthan the Biden administration did.
By its willful sacrifice ofborder security with Mexico for
(35:15):
half a dozen different reasons.
It's not crazy for American votersto be horrified by that ongoing.
>> Peter Robinson (35:26):
Nobody voted for that.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (35:28):
No, and with border controls, with national sovereignty,
with an approach where we get to choosewhom we invite into our country.
And with our fantasticspecial secret sauce for
assimilating newcomers into loyal andproductive Americans,
(35:51):
I think there's a very verypositive future ahead of us
>> Peter Robinson (35:56):
All right,
I'm quoting from a differentarticle in Foreign Affairs but
I'm quoting you stillthis article is called
America's Education Crisis isa National Security Crisis.
The basic formula for material advancereaping the rewards of augmented human
(36:16):
resources andtechnological innovation will be the same.
But today the US is only neck and
neck with China in total highlytrained workers, close quote.
So even if demographic trends favor us,I believe you argue and argue insistently
vehemently that we have to do a better jobat educating our own population correct?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (36:39):
Absolutely, I mean our advantages come
from our human resources and our dare say
unique political and cultural framework.
Which allow us to unlockthe value in human beings in a way
(37:00):
that you don't see any placeelse in the world really.
And look at what our system does toattract talent from all over the world,
I mean unlocking talent from abroadhas also been one of the great
game changers for the United Statesboth domestically and geopolitically.
>> Peter Robinson (37:24):
So let me ask you a question that we've seen out in the states
we depart for a moment from Washingtonalways a mentally refreshing
exercise out in the states we'veseen this expanding school choice.
Milton Friedman recommendedschool choice six decades ago but
we're finally seeing it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (37:44):
Yeah. >> Peter Robinson
teachers union so embarrassedthemselves during the COVID lockdown.
Perhaps that plays part of it but oneway or the other we now have 29 states,
plus the District of Columbiahave school choice programs.
I believe I should make that 30 states,because I believe
the governor of Texas has now justsigned a new school choice program,
(38:06):
now this is K12 we're talking about,are you optimistic?
That has to be positive.
>> Peter Robinson (38:12):
It has to be doesn't it?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (38:14):
I mean, the thing that we see as very well Peter is,
the worrisome unevenness ofresults within the United States.
We've got a lot of fantastic publicschools we also have a lot of
mediocre ones andwe've got some horrendously bad ones.
Being able to fire a teacher orreward a good teacher
(38:38):
is one of the few leversthat we have that really
seems to increase educationalquality outcomes.
>> Peter Robinson (38:48):
Okay, and then I haven't thought this through but
you being you I suspect youwill have thought it through at
least tentatively,what about higher education?
I mean, it seems to me you could argue,one could argue I don't know what argument
you'd make but that's the point I'msetting up a question for you here.
(39:11):
That our institutions of higher learningand particularly our most prestigious
institutions of higher learning withwhich you are intimately acquainted,
really have become much too complacent,much too self perpetuating.
And that this reactionagainst them which takes
(39:32):
all kinds of forms reaction against DEI.
We have the Trump administration saying,I think you and I would both feel
that the Trump administration says toHarvard, knock off this and this and
this and this or we're gonnatake away some of your funding.
It says to Columbia knock off this andthis and this and this or
we'll take away some of your funding.
(39:54):
My own view is that this and this and thisrepresents an undue intrusion on the self
government of a private institution, butthat it sure is getting at something.
And that to the extent that thisadministration shakes up and
makes in some degree orother more responsive to the wider public,
(40:15):
to the national interest, these eliteinstitutions, it will have improved them.
Now of course there is the other argument.
How dare you say such a thing?
It's taking a sledgehammerto these jewels.
I don't know.
Do you have a thoughts on this?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (40:29):
Yeah, I mean we've got a really confusing set of
developments in higher education andthis isn't new.
I mean, this has been unfoldingreally since the 60s.
On the one hand,we really do have the leading research and
development centers in the worldin our research universities
(40:55):
in the United States that has->> Peter Robinson: They really are jewels.
That part has to change.
>> Peter Robinson (41:02):
Right.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (41:03):
What's troubling, obnoxious and I think should
be totally unacceptable isthe sort of the long march
through the institution byenemies of the open society.
And that has no place in institutionsof free and open inquiry.
(41:31):
And yet it is so obvious in so
many universities, in so many departments,
in whole schools within universities.
One of the things which is mosttroubling to me about political and
public life in the US thesedays is the sort of slow
(41:55):
death of truth that we'reseeing in the public square.
And it's not just statements thatare being made in the White House.
It's the contempt for truth that we seein the media and it's the disregard or
sometimes the hostility towardstruth in the universities.
(42:19):
Dealing with this problem it's not easy.
We don't have a magic wand for it.
This problem developed over the courseof a couple of generations.
It's a historical problem at this point.
I don't know that it'll be resolved inless than a historical period of time.
But sometimes it looks a little bit,if you're in a university,
(42:40):
it looks a little bit likethe battle of Stalingrad.
And it looks like you had house to houseto house combat to get safe spaces back,
safe spaces for intellectual inquiry.
>> Peter Robinson (42:50):
Yes.
A few last questions, Nick.
Here I'm gonna quote you from anotherarticle, but again I'm quoting you.
This is published by AEI itself,the American Enterprise Institute itself,
America's suicide attempt, the sequel.
This is you.
With the 2024 election, we saw a broadpolitical rejection of open borders,
(43:10):
reverse-racism via DEI, andstate abetted censorship.
But instead of correcting course,
the US government now seems to be lurchinginto an alternate mode of self-harm,
embarking on a project of dismantlingthe international order, an order,
ironically, that the United Statesitself painstakingly helped to build.
(43:34):
First of all, you may want toamend that since you published it.
I don't know.
But the question would be, withdemographic trends working in our favor,
the Trump administrationshouldn't be attempting to
dismantle the international order.
It should be trying to shore it up.
Is that the argument?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (43:51):
My argument would be that Americans are going to be
almost certainly worse off,less affluent and
less secure if we sacrifice the,let's call it the Pax Americana,
the that we have helped to buildover the last three generations,
(44:12):
since the end of World War II.
There are many,many flaws in the existing world order and
many, many flaws in our systemof alliances around the world.
There are problems with the tradingsystem, with the finance system.
(44:33):
But again,it's a question of compared to what?
And if we're going to tinker with this orradically adjust it,
we better think firstabout what the unintended
consequences of any bigchanges might be if.
>> Peter Robinson (44:52):
If we end the Pax Americana, the American Peace.
There is no other Pax that will follow it.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (45:01):
Well, maybe a Pax upon our house.
>> Peter Robinson (45:03):
All right.
The very first sentence of your essay,the Age of Depopulation.
I'm going back to our master text forthe day.
Today in Foreign Affairs,although few yet see it coming,
humans are about to entera new era of history.
What interests me is thatbeginning dependent clause,
although few yet see it coming.
(45:24):
Why is that?
Why do so?
Why aren't there cover stories onmagazine after magazine after magazine?
Why is it still Nick towhom we must turn to get
the latest on this gigantic issue?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (45:42):
One reason might be that we're kind of accustomed to
thinking that tomorrow is going tobe like today, plus or minus 2%.
It's an easy way to organize one'sthinking and one's behavior.
It doesn't help us much when thereare big radical disruptions ahead.
(46:06):
Another is that the ideology,
I'll call it the myth of overpopulation,
this kind of zombie ideastill circulates much too
far in the intelligentsia andeven in policy circles.
(46:27):
The final thing is that the world'sa big complicated place,
and the realm of the real andthe possible is much wider and
deeper than our own imaginations.
And so our imaginations are probablygonna be slapped by reality.
(46:47):
We're gonna have to rethink everythingthat we assume about these arrangements.
>> Peter Robinson (46:56):
You make an argument.
I say we're on last questions butthis is a basic question.
You make the argument thatdepopulation needn't be bad.
To put it crudely, a quotation andthen a brief video clip.
The quotation is you.
Even in a graying and depopulating world,steadily improving living standards and
(47:20):
material and technologicaladvances will still be possible.
And here is the video clip.
>> Speaker 3 (47:29):
The birth rate is very low in almost every country.
And unless that changes,civilization will disappear.
America had the lowest birth rate,I believe, ever.
That was last year.
Places like Korea, the birth rateis one-third replacement rate.
That means in three generations,Korea will be 3 or 4% of its current size.
(47:50):
And nothing seems to beturning that around.
Humanity is dying.
>> Peter Robinson (47:56):
And Nick Eberstadt answers Elon Musk, how.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (48:05):
We have an extraordinary new,
completely unfamiliar challengein front of us that's
posed by a disinterest inhaving large families,
by a change in our own desire forour own progeny,
for continuing our own family lineages.
(48:30):
Have to remember that we'rethe most adaptable species.
I think we'll be able toadapt to this materially.
As I say, I'm cautiously optimistic thatwe'll be able to maintain prosperity.
My imagination isn't big enough to
(48:52):
really understand how family life is going
to work in a universe where there are so
few siblings and so few relatives.
We'll adapt somehow,something will fill social capital vacuum.
>> Peter Robinson (49:15):
There are people saying AI will do it.
We'll have robots,we'll have computers that know so
much they can keep us company.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (49:21):
Well, we get into the post human world and stuff.
But the threat to the familyis the part of this that I
can't really wrap my head around, I mean->> Peter Robinson: I
thought you were gonna be more cheerful.
I thought you were gonna say calm down,Elon.
We may be half as many, but we'll stillbe well off and enjoying ourselves.
(49:46):
We can shrink as a species for a long time and
still have billions and billions andbillions of people on Earth.
And during that period of adaptation,
we may also find thatthere are intellectual and
spiritual andideological changes that make for
(50:11):
desire for children in consequentialportions of the planet.
>> Peter Robinson (50:19):
Okay, so here's the last question, again, I'm quoting you.
People increasingly prize autonomy,
self-actualization, andconvenience and children, for
their many joys, are quintessentiallyinconvenient, close quote.
Well, now, hold on, let me repeat that.
Autonomy, self-actualization,and convenience.
(50:45):
And I put it to you both asan academic and as a friend,
because I'm attacking you here slightlybecause I know you well enough, Nick.
I put it to you that autonomy,self-actualization, and
convenience represent a recipe foran empty life.
(51:06):
And there is something thatyou haven't quite said,
but that I suspect you feelvery sad about all of this.
That somehow or other I put itto you earlier in the show, but
I put it to you again now.
Somehow or other there is something
(51:27):
spiritually amiss here that Israel,
I once asked a young Israeli woman,
why is Israel stillabove replacement level?
And her reply struck me as very profound.
At least it has always stayed with me.
(51:47):
She said, my country, Israel,my country is still a cause.
People have something to live for, for
which they want to bringchildren into existence.
So here's my last question.
In this depopulating world,what would Nick Eberstadt, a good and
(52:10):
holy man who is also a brilliantdemographer, advise Pope Leo XIV?
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (52:17):
All right, I don't think that the Prince
of Rome needs any guidancefrom an economist or
a demographer about what makes formeaning and
spiritual completeness in life.
(52:43):
What I suppose we need outside of clerical
circles is a little bitmore introspection.
There have never been somany people on earth as there are now.
And there's so much loneliness.
I mean, we've cracked the formula forabundance and
(53:05):
that may be necessary forthe sort of a fulfilling
flourishing of our species,but it's inadequate.
That's not game over.
What we're seeing allaround the world with
this birth crash is a change in values and
(53:30):
I think in an awful lotof cases a substitution
of older values formuch less fulfilling ones.
You look at the iPhone and you see so
many people gazing intothat anywhere you go,
even in low income countries,it's like a modern
(53:54):
day Narcissus mirror andit is irresistible.
But it's also so inferior to the realfull life to the technicolor life,
that people can live here.
So the quest for meaning is not going to
end once we head into depopulation,
(54:17):
as I believe we willsooner than most presume.
We're going to adapt and adjust to it and
there's going to be, I think,a great spiritual ferment and
churning as world population contracts.
(54:39):
Give it a couple of generations,give it a little time.
We're a very adaptable animal.
>> Peter Robinson (54:46):
Nick Eberstadt, thank you.
>> Nicholas Eberstadt (54:48):
Thank you, Peter.
>> Peter Robinson (54:49):
For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation,
I'm Peter Robinson.
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